The Retreat from Moscow

Love can sometimes be a battleground, as Alice and Edward discover when their 33-year marriage unravels in William Nicholson’s The Retreat from Moscow. Edward is a mild and distant history teacher, obsessed with his daily crossword puzzle and historical accounts of Napoleon’s disastrous campaign against Moscow. His only wish is that his wife, Alice, would stop pestering him so he can concentrate on these passions. Alice wants a “real” marriage, but her increasingly desperate attempts to draw Edward back into their relationship only causes him to retreat farther away from her.