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With Ghorman, the writers have the full layer cake of heartbreaking possibilities.

“I was a layer cake of abandonment and hurt and fury, iced with a smile,” goes a typically curt, sardonic line in Manguso’s second novel, which chronicles the slow-motion collapse of a marriage.

Each apartment in their building had its own floor, like a layer cake.

A layer cake of overlapping aquifers extends from New Jersey to Florida along the coast, providing a reliable source of water for drinking, irrigation and industrial uses.

Those folks tend to have hobbies other than making layer cakes.