Hervé le Tellier's Enough About Love is the kind of very French book that seems to lose none of its Frenchness in translation, which is a wonderful, difficult, marvelous thing. The novel traces the love lives of four characters, whose infidelities and romances intertwine with one another, leaving a tangle that is not quite a love triangle, not quite a love square, but not quite expected. Set against a backdrop of modern Paris, these four characters are French to the core, in style, character, thought, and deed, but their stories are easily carried from one culture to another.Le Tellier's writing is strong and well-crafted; he weaves a complicated web of storylines without ever losing track of where he is or where he is going. His writing is neat and orderly and philosophical; his characters are messy and deep and confused. He is eminently quotable, with passages speaking to the nature of love, reading, romance, sex, friendship; his story is heartfelt and meaningful, flawed in the way that real life is flawed. He is an author tackling big life issues in small life events; his work is very, very French.
Enough About Love is intriguing from the first you read the title - which, to be frank, is the main reason I was drawn into this book - to the moment you turn the last page and realize with a startling frankness that really, there never is "enough about love." It's a subject we will continue to muse over, meddle with, write about, etc. It will at once give us a place in which we belong and yet continue to break our hearts. It will keep poets writing poetry, singers singing songs, author crafting novels. And precisely because he understands this, le Tellier's Enough About Love is intriguingly relevant, no matter what language you read it in.
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Thoughts from other bookworms:
Literary License: Short Reviews with Real Opinions
My Books. My Life.
The Book Lady's Blog
The Boston Bibliophile
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Many thanks to Other Press for providing an e-galley of this title for review, via NetGalley.
So wonderfully French despite the translation. :)
ReplyDeletesold.
ReplyDeleteMichelle - Isn't it? I loved that about it.
ReplyDeleteShe - Enjoy!