The Shelf

From the groundbreaking author of They comes an “elegantly slender account of a love affair, a death, and a mystery.” (Janice Elliott, The Sunday Telegraph)

"I did not, my dear Francis, intend to have an affair with her." Twenty years ago, Cassandra began sleeping with a married woman named Anne. Although begun in passion, their entanglement ended abruptly, shortly after which Anne killed herself. Was Anne beyond help, or did Cassandra bear some responsibility for her lover’s demise? Haunted by her memories of their time together, and finally able to tell her story, Cassandra unburdens herself in a letter to her dear friend Francis.

Originally published in 1984, and closely based on a tumultuous and ultimately tragic relationship the author had with a married woman two decades earlier, The Shelf is a deeply moving work of autofiction—“Though I shall deny it, of course,” Kay Dick told a reporter shortly after its publication. Written with a “quiet elegance” (Elaine Feinstein, The Times), it’s a “tour de force” that places Dick “in the same category of sensibility as Jean Rhys, Katherine Mansfield and Ford Madox Ford” (Gillian Freeman).