Consequences (of Defensive Adultery) by M. Jane Colette (May 2, 2017); 232 pages. Available as either ebook or paperback at Amazon here. And from Kobo books here. (See the author’s website at mjanecolette.com for more buying options.)

Consequences proposes, in a roundabout way, the concept of “defensive adultery”—adultery, in other words, committed in response to one’s partner’s wrongs (be they emotional abandonment or sexual affairs), a way of salving oneself after a lover’s cruelty, or of creating enough emotional distance that the lover’s wrongdoings can’t hurt you. In the novel, the narrator Elizabeth relates the story of such adultery to her current lover as they… do lover things.

In her story, which occurs before she takes up with her current lover, she begins an affair with a professor whose marriage to another woman, Zia, has crumbled. Into the empty space steps Elizabeth, only to discover that, once she…