Robison has become one of my favorite writers. Introduced to her through an interview by Tom Drury who called her one of the best writers of dialogue I began with DOA and One on the Way, but I think Subtraction even better. It is a startling contemporary novel. A love triangle done in short impressionistic prose about a poet trying to save her marriage to a drunken charmer. But the triangle happens because Raf's best friend tries to console her. Minimalist but still piercing and funny and always witty we are given a kind of inferno tour of Houston Texas and the self destructive world wind of her husband. No paragraph is more than four lines so all the rubbish is cut out. It is clear that Robison could write screenplays. But the separation of the heartbreak from the entertainment is a high wire act and by the time they all end up on the Cape for the final storm and ending, you feel you have been as charmed and deflated as she is. Robison is not getting much attention now but she will be re-discovered because she is just too damn good. An essential American voice giving us a world barely keeping to its orbit with the same kind of deadpan charm as her colleague Drury. Yeah, there's a plot but this is about character and brief sparking moments of life. ( )