Enough About Love [Paperback]

Hervé Le Tellier (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 1, 2011

Any man—or woman—who wants to hear nothing—or no more—about love should put this book down.

Anna and Louise could be sisters, but they don’t know each other. They are both married with children, and for the most part, they are happy. On almost the same day, Anna, a psychiatrist, crosses paths with Yves, a writer, while Louise, a lawyer, meets Anna’s analyst, Thomas. Love at first sight is still possible for those into their forties and long-married. But when you have already mapped out a life path, a passionate affair can come at a high price. For our four characters, their lives are unexpectedly turned upside down by the deliciously inconvenient arrival of love. For Anna, meeting Yves has brought a flurry of excitement to her life and made her question her values, her reliable husband, and her responsibilities to her children. For Louise, a successful career woman in a stable and comfortable marriage, her routine is uprooted by the youthful passion she feels for Thomas. Thought-provoking, sophisticated, and, above all, amusing, Enough About Love captures the euphoria of desire through tender and unflinching portraits of husbands, wives, and lovers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Any man—or woman—who wants to hear nothing—or no more—about love should put this book down," warns Le Tellier in this complicated tale of the romantic lives of four Parisians. Anna Stein and Louise Blum have never met, but their lives are comparable: both are married with children, settled and reasonably happy, until, within days, each one meets a man who will upset the equilibrium of their lives. Anna, a doctor married to a doctor, comes under the spell of a free-spirited writer, Yves Janvier, while lawyer Louise, whose husband is a mild-mannered scientist, falls for Anna's analyst, Dr. Thomas Le Gall. Comedy and pathos ensue as the cast of wives, husbands, and lovers struggle to reconcile their values with their passions. "Desire will not allow for simple explanations," Le Tellier observes as he skillfully weaves a tapestry of his characters' adventures. "When you don't know where you want to go, it doesn't matter which path you take," Anna decides as she contemplates a difficult decision, the dilemma that these four very real, very flawed, and very likable people all face. A touching and thought-provoking study of attraction, responsibility, and love. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

Despite its title, Enough about Love is all about love. Middle-aged Parisian psychoanalyst Thomas has been analyzing Anna Stein for 12 years. She�s married with children, fashionable, and successful. This particular therapy session begins with her confession, I�ve met someone. That someone is Yves, a popular French fiction writer. Thomas is also about to meet someone, Louise, a married woman with two children. With their love affairs paralleling one another�s, the couples�Thomas and Louise, Anna and Yves�face the turmoil of clandestine trysts and must decide which path to take, embracing reckless desire or retreating into the stability of marriage. Le Tellier addresses all the subtleties of love, passion, and disappointment with dexterity and a smart narrative. The novel is both thoroughly complex and utterly simple. Full of allusions, it takes on a meta-narrative structure as Yves begins to craft his own novel, but the main stories remain well grounded in reality, and readers will have no trouble relating to the characters� dilemmas. Middle-aged romance has rarely seemed so intriguing. --Heather Paulson

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Other Press; First Edition edition (February 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590513991
• ISBN-13: 978-1590513996
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #845,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Affairs will happen February 7, 2011

By J. Grattan TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This novel, set in Paris in the decade of the 2000's, is structured almost as a study of how marital stagnation and ennui can fuel a sudden risky, passionate response towards someone who unexpectedly appears in one's life with irresistible physical and intellectual presence - who represents a way out. The reader is drawn in by the series-of-snapshots construction of the book, requiring that a collection of recorded short scenes involving different pairings of characters - like brief acts in a play - be combined to form a finished novel.

The novel has a distinct upper middle-class vibe. The two leading characters are well-educated, highly refined, forty-something Anna, a psychiatrist, and Louise, a lawyer. Anna's husband is a noted surgeon and Louise's husband is a renowned scientist. Louise does not know Anna, but coincidentally it is Anna's psychoanalyst, Thomas, who has taken her breath away. In Anna's case, she has become totally infatuated by whimsical, lesser-known, writer, Yves.

The author captures so well the intoxication that overwhelms these connection-starved women. In a series of vignettes, the excitement, the simple, lusty pleasures, of the first few weeks of meeting are glimpsed. But there are sobering considerations when their thinking turns to the question of whether a new life with their lovers is possible. The past must be reassessed - is love truly gone. Can disrupting a family be justified? Can their lovers really meet their expectations, will they disappoint? Those considerations do have an impact in this story.

Two of the more poignant scenes are where the husbands first see or meet their rivals. Anna's husband secretly attends an address given by Yves, on, of all things, the meaning of "foreign," only to discover Anna in attendance in a front row seat. Louise's husband schedules a session with Thomas under a false name, which fools no one. The author also uses an inventive technique of splitting a few pages into columns to show simultaneous trains of thought on a particular matter.

The story is very compelling; Anna and Louise are sympathetically portrayed, though their shortcomings are not ignored. By design the story is presented in almost outline form - a definite "facts-only" motif. In that structure, much gets left out, such as any real feel for the husbands. But in relatively few brush strokes the author captures the emotional, irrational, unstoppable pull of desire once unleashed. The author's conclusion is hardly one that tragedy has occurred. It is more that desire is real and maybe for the health of the human psyche it must be fulfilled. There may be some broad social lessons there regarding monogamy and affairs.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Book Filled with Wonders February 8, 2011

By G. Dawson

Format:Paperback

In true Oulipo fashion, Hervé Le Tellier's latest novel, Enough About Love, is a constraint-filled endeavor. With a structure inspired by a game of Abkhazian dominoes, Le Tellier's six protagonists combine and recombine in every possible two-person configuration in short chapters titled according to their major players (e.g., Yves and Anna, Thomas and Louise). The chapters follow quickly upon one another and, as they are often dominated by dialog, give the flavor of a dramatic performance rather than a traditional novel. Indeed, Enough about Love would make for a very entertaining play, and Le Tellier's self-imposed constraints never get in the way of the story.

The novel's main action consists of two overlapping love triangles involving two married couples and two single men, all middle-aged. The constantly morphing relationships illustrate various forms of love, including married love, adulterous love, and jealous love. The overall effect is kaleidoscopic, the characters' ever-shifting emotions and interactions slide against each other to reveal different shades and nuances. Enough About Love's complex structure supports and enhances its story, and Adriana Hunter's adept English translation delivers all the playfulness and complexity of the original.

Within the novel's larger framework, Le Tellier cleverly embeds a couple stand-out set pieces. One is a public reading by Yves of an essay he wrote on "foreignness" juxtaposed in two-column format with a running internal monologue by Yves's lover's husband, who's decided to attend the reading in an act of curiosity or martyrdom or both. The second set piece is a book written by Yves's for his lover Anna composed of forty of Yves's most significant memories of Anna. In an audacious move, Le Tellier includes Yves's entire book (all 25 pages of it) within this novel. The result is a stunningly intimate portrayal of love, leaving the reader feeling like a voyeur who stumbled upon an open bedroom window, uncomfortable and thrilled at the same time.

The two female protagonists, Anna and Louise, share too many similarities, including fashion tastes, high-powered careers, and dominant personalities. More contrast would have been welcome in these characters, but this is a small complaint in a book filled with so many wonders. Highly recommended.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Crossed paths and cross-purposes February 10, 2011

By switterbug TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Thomas loves Louise, a lawyer. Louise is married to Romain, a scientist. Louise loves Thomas. Yves, a writer, loves Anna. Anna, a psychiatrist, loves Yves, a man she found "unsettling." Anna is married to Stan, an ophthalmologist. Thomas is Anna's psychoanalyst. No, this isn't an LSAT logic problem or a torrid soap opera. These are the characters that comprise Le Tellier's urbane, au courant Paris comedy, a droll romp that is nevertheless intimate and complex within the playful pages. It's packed with contagious quotes that you want to spread:

"Everyone should have analysis. It should be compulsory, like military service used to be."

Or, let's say you are jealous of a woman and want to share a canny reproach with a friend:

"She sees herself as slim, lives being slim as synonymous with being rigorous. Gaining weight, she is convinced, is always a lapse."

Lots of light, saucy bon mots flash through this story, but there are small earthquakes that convulse now and then. At 228 pages and 51 short chapters (and an epilogue), most chapters are structured in pairs, such as "Thomas and Louise" and "Anna and Yves," alluding to couples, as well as Abkhazian dominoes, a game that is close to Yves' heart. "He is a writer who has readers, but not a true readership." He may obscure himself further by titling his next novel after that titular game.

Throughout the wry novel, the coupling and uncoupling of husbands, wives, and lovers overlap and cross, and sometimes meet. The themes and ideas may be common but the characters are genuine and close. The dialog is inspired, not prepared or clichéd. The prose slides creamily off the tongue, like a filled croissant, and is peppered with paradox and the double entendre, pointed aphorisms and learned allusions. And life can be turned into aphorisms, instructs Thomas to his patient, Anna, as a way of fixing life into words.

"...what attracts us about another person has had more to do with what makes them fragile...Love is kindled by the weakness we perceive, the flaw we get in through, wouldn't you say?"

There's a gravitas that manifests subtly, an accretion of observations and details that examine love from every curve and angle. You can visualize this dialog-heavy book as a film, or a play. There is no way not to compare Le Tellier to the best of Woody Allen--a little bit Lubitsch, a little bit Jewish, some Annie Hall, some Stardust Memories, a profusion of Freud. But this is French, and you will imagine that you are walking through Jardin du Luxembourg or running across the Quai des Grands Augustins on a grey, Paris day. It's eclectic, though, with American as well as other infusions. The savvy prose serves up a savory atmosphere, drifting through outdoor cafés and public squares. Some of the time, though, you are indoors, near a bookcase, and often a bed...

Cultural icons, such as François Truffaut, are included, not just as a reference, but as meaning to the story at hand. Thomas emails Louise, after they first meet, that doesn't a scene in Stolen Kisses anticipate the future of email? But the scene he shares, in detail, is the buttering of his desires.

There is even a postmodernish, double-column chapter; on one side is Yves' dry, but increasingly inventive lecture of the word "foreign," with emphasis on the fact that the French have only one word for it, l'etranger. Juxtaposed on the other side is the cuckolded Stan, seated in the back row, agonized in a stream of invective consciousness. The linguistic stunt work by the author is more than a showcase; it concludes in a probing, poignant place of alarm and discovery.

The characters in these triangular love affairs share universal elements-- sex and death, guilt and virtue, grief and ecstasy, illusion and certainty, passion and ennui. And, of course, love. But enough about love.

Eminent credit goes to Adriana Hunter for her luminous translation from the French.