Imperfect Lives

Three narrators lend their talents to Washington’s (The Intangible) second novel. A killer-for-hire with cancer decides to tell all before he dies; a widow learns that her husband’s apparent suicide was one of the hit man’s jobs; and a cult escapee will do anything to keep her past a secret. It takes some convoluted narrative to connect these characters, and Washington likes to digress on any subject of interest to them (e.g., pink Depression glass, the search for extraterrestrial life, and bodyweight maintenance), but narrators Adenrele Ojo, Cary Hite, and Megan Tusing capably smooth over rough asides and slow introductions. Jointly, the narrators reveal people struggling to make room for present and future dreams while boxed in by their irrevocable histories. Hite voices this contradiction with aplomb as hitman-with-a-conscience Cooper Franklin. Tamara, a scientist questioning whether she ever truly knew her late husband and haunted by an earlier family tragedy, is voiced with credible intelligence by Ojo. Finally, as Cindy, whose past is the key to one of Cooper’s kills, Tusing evokes sympathy for someone who just wants to put her imperfections behind her but can’t.