Alta Ifland has carved out a name for herself in literary/translation circles with her previous books, and building on the good blurbs for her previous, Southern California-meets-Eastern Europe debut novel, The Wife Who Wasn't, this new novel-Speaking to No. 4-will get greater, better-financed push for reviews and publicity more generally. A highly entertaining and yet intelligent, intriguingly structured, and comical literary thriller of sorts, it takes readers from the French monasteries where Alma vacations and meets the Monk, to Boston, to Budapest, to several Japanese shukubos (i.e, temple lodgings) and a hotel in Tokyo, Speaking to No. 4 chronicles one woman's global quest for independence in a journey that has her ex-husbands and others all talking with her prospective fourth husband, who has no idea where she might have vanished. The novel's rich insights on Western vs. Eastern concepts of physical space will be of particular interest to readers drawn to architecture.