Heidi Pitlor's new novel, THE DAYLIGHT MARRIAGE, fits the very definition of the word "spare." It's a short book, weighing in at under 250 pages, and there aren't very many words on the page either. It's also economical in its prose, using short, straightforward sentences and relatively unsophisticated vocabulary. Its emotions, too, feel spare or subdued --- much is left unsaid and instead readers must fill in the gaps, as Pitlor constructs a narrative rife with regrets, despair and even horror --- quite at odds with the perfectly controlled, spare prose with which she tells it.

Hannah and Lovell are like a lot of couples in early middle age. They met in their 20s (Hannah delivered some flowers to Lovell, and he liked her so much that he kept ordering more flowers for himself, just to chat up the delivery girl) when both were living in Boston. Hannah was fresh from a breakup with her first serious boyfriend, and, years later, Lovell still wonders if he was just the rebound guy.

"The novel's sparseness and surface simplicity belie its emotional heft. After reading its powerful final pages, readers may find themselves longing to embrace those dearest to them..."

It has been years since they first got together, and now with two children, more than 15 years of marriage, and a move to the stifling suburbs behind them, it's easy for both to forget how much they once loved each other. Lovell is constantly busy with his work as a climate scientist; Hannah feels underutilized as a stay-at-home mom and part-time florist. Their story of stasis and inertia is neither particularly interesting nor especially unique --- and that is what makes Pitlor's novel that much more chilling.

For, in the wake of a bad argument with Lovell, on a day that begins like any other school or work day, Hannah decides on a whim to break away from her usual routine and instead drive into Boston, to see some of her old haunts and just to do something different for an hour or two. But Hannah never comes home, and in the wake of her disappearance, Lovell and his two children must reexamine their life as a family and their relationship to the now-absent Hannah.

For much of the novel, the narrative alternates between chapters told from Lovell's point of view, after Hannah's disappearance, and chapters from Hannah's perspective, gradually revealing what transpired on that fateful day. The reader learns what happened to Hannah slowly, sort of like how Lovell and his children do. The pacing of this discovery, combined with Pitlor's portrayal of the family in crisis, results in a steadily escalating sense of dread, made worse, perhaps, by the realization that it's a series of small decisions, tiny mistakes and miniscule misunderstandings that result in a potentially horrific and life-altering tragedy.

The novel's sparseness and surface simplicity belie its emotional heft. After reading its powerful final pages, readers may find themselves longing to embrace those dearest to them or just remembering to say "I love you," no matter how long those words have gone unsaid.