Reviewed by Terri Schlichenmeyer

If you’re old enough to be reading this book review, chances are you’re old enough to have had your heart broken a time or two.

So how did you handle it? Did you rant and wail, call him names and throw his stuff around your apartment, hugging every stuffed animal he ever gave you? Or did you lean on your girlfriends and vow that you’d never have a man in your life, never-ever-ever again?

But what if he was gone for good—off the face of the earth? Would your grief go to a deeper level? In Janet Fitch’s new novel, Paint It Black, Josie Tyrell learns that grief can be bottomless but that healing can come from unlikely places.

Ever since Josie Tyrell fell in love with Michael Faraday in the bedroom of a house near a pool filled with algae, she couldn’t imagine living without the smell of him, the way he shaved with a straight razor, or the things he did to amuse her.

Once, they dreamed of Paris. Michael painted a Parisian street scene on the wall of their bedroom to remind them of the future: Blaise and little Jeanne; croissants and cafes; Montremartre in the springtime.

But not any more.

Michael said he was going to go to his mother’s house to paint. He said he’d be gone a week. He told Josie he wouldn’t be answering his phone. But instead of painting, instead of spending a week at his mother’s home, Michael drove to a desolate motel three hours outside of Los Angeles. There, he put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.