“Heroic Measures”

Jill Ciment’s novel “Heroic Measures” takes place over a single weekend in New York. The Cohens are selling their apartment, and an open house gives way to serious shenanigans, not the least of which involves a terrorist plot. Written from various perspectives (including that of the Cohens’ dog), the book deals with both intimate domestic problems and the chaos and confusion of modern life. The New York Times says that Ciment “effectively reveals this older twosome to us, this couple whom time and circumstance have prevented us from actually meeting (unless, at that open house?), yet whom we instantly and intimately know.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls the novel “spare and surprisingly gripping.”