The first person chronicle of a deceived husband about his cheating wife, her lover, the lover's wife, and the lover's wife's ward. It has a nightmarish quality; the narrator is living a nightmare, so that's appropriate.
It's a little difficult for me to believe, since there are many mores and morals that have vanished from the culture and society I know. Of course now, no person is really ashamed of an affair, no one is ignorant of sex. So it takes some suspension of disbelief to be sympathetic with the narrator, to truly believe that he could be so easily fooled by his wife and her tale of a weak heart!
Ford does an excellent job with it though. At times I thought he was using an unreliable narrator. Could the narrator really be that gullible? Surely he was lying about his real feelings. But Ford handles it very well. My edition had a "dedicatory letter" by Ford that was little more than bragging, but I suppose he had a right to be proud of his effort in writing this novel.
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