The Belly of an Architect

Stourley Kracklite, a relentlessly driven, detail-obsessed architect, journeys from America to Rome with his significantly younger wife, Louisa, to supervise an architectural homage to his personal idol, the 18th-century master builder Etienne-Louis Boullée. En route by train, the couple conceives a much-desired child. Yet Stourley's fixation on his wife's expanding belly, his sense of her perceived infidelity, and his own recurring abdominal pains escalate into epic, dangerous proportions.