How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Advantages:
Thought provoking . . .
Disadvantages:
. . . hm, I'm thinking about it . . . .
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
If a happily married woman lies awake at night next to her husband visualising another man making love to her, is she being unfaithful to her husband or just indulging in fantasy?
Thought provoking questions similar to this are addressed in ‘The Lovers’: a novel that weaves love’s many guises into an impenetrable tapestry which perfectly expresses the pleasure and torment injected into a person who is tempted to bite into the forbidden fruit that is carnal desire. The result is a judicious cross-examination of ‘love’, ‘sex’ and ‘happiness’ from male and female perspectives written without bias.
Set in modern day Paris, we are introduced to Gilles and Pauline who, after he watches her drop her son off at school, plucks up the courage to ask Pauline to meet him for a clandestine dinner and inspite of herself she agrees. Until this moment, their body language provided a form of communication on the few times they have seen each other at the school gates: a smile here, a furtive glance there…
Gilles is 49 years old and married to Blanche, they have a 6 year old daughter, Sarah. Blanche wants a divorce on the grounds of her husband’s infidelity. Gilles doesn’t want a divorce, claiming his infidelity is purely for sexual gratification as his wife’s libido is not as voracious as his, thereby forcing him to seek solace elsewhere. Gilles actually does love his wife… and then he meets Pauline.
Pauline is happily married to Marc and they have a 6 year old son, Theodore. Pauline is in the early stages of pregnancy. She is 20 years younger than Gilles… and finds herself tremendously attracted to him.
The book revolves around the evening Gilles and Pauline have their covert dinner together – and throughout the meal from hors d'oeuvre to dessert, we are simultaneously exposed to parallel goings on in the lives of friends independently known to Gilles and Pauline, examining their own relationships. All the while Gilles and Pauline desperately attempt to remain faithful to their spouses in deed, if not in thought.
The unashamed chemistry between Gilles and Pauline is highly erotic. To provide you with a more probing account of their simmering relationship would, I fear, prove to be an anti-climax that destroys the sumptuous development to an unexpected outcome should you read the book.
‘The Lovers’ is a translation by Helen Stevenson (published by Atlantic Books under the name of Alice Ferney). Ferney’s original French novel is entitled ‘La conversation amoureuse’ (first published in France by Actes Sud in 2000).
The prose throughout the book is written in block text – there are no speech marks anywhere, making reading tedious at times. I’m not sure if this is a direct translation from the French version of the novel, or Stevenson’s personal slant when writing ‘The Lovers’.
In any event, it is not a novel to be rushed – take your time to let the heady concoction of a couple’s surreptitious sexual hunger wrestling with their moral scruples ignite the natural flame that flickers within us all.
This novel is in no way what is known as ‘chick lit’. Accessible to men and women alike, the theme is very adult: no preaching and no apologies for expressing raw emotion between the sexes so openly.
Overall, Alice Ferney examines the dark recesses that lie behind our pursuit of happiness and leaves us thinking about her words for a very long time.
