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The Trial of True Love

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At age thirty, Bron, a London writer, remains commitment phobic, on the verge of what he hopes will be a successful career, with a contract to compose a book about love at first sight. Bron throws himself into this task with a vengeance, his premise based primarily on the life and love of Artist Paul Marotte. The young author, who has despaired of ever experiencing his topic first hand, moves to a cottage on the estate of his friend, where (viola!) Bron meets the beautiful and mysterious Flora. Casting aside the task at hand for more personal pursuits, Bron follows Flora to Amsterdam, suddenly embroiled in the confusion and angst of his own "love at first sight".

Captivated by Flora, Bron questions his own presumptions of romance and fidelity, the loving self closely tied to the true self. He is on the chase of his life, pursuing Flora, who is not only married but cynical, believing all men who desire her are only after one thing. She isn't sure how to assess Bron, who enjoys more success with her by posing theories on the nature of love than bringing his affections to fruition. For his part, Bron is so consumed with the ideal of Flora that he fails to analyze the attraction beyond her beauty and resistance, but Bron is eventually stimulated in his writing endeavors in this strange dance, forced to reassess his own assumptions. It is difficult to have sympathy for Flora, burdened with her beauty, resenting the covert stares of men. Flora's response to all and sundry is petulant, much like those who agonize over their burden, "don't hate me because I'm beautiful".

While in Amsterdam, Bron meets Freddy Christensen, an art collector who enjoys discussing the Nazi Occupation's usurpation of Jewish art collections during the war, as allowed by Regulation 58/42. The Germans saved the paintings, while exterminating their owners. Freddy gleefully attacks Bron's theories of true love, asking, "Is it possible that what a man wants to give is not what a woman wants to receive?" Bron believes that love can be given, while Freddy suggests it can only be taken. The quandary for Bron is in determining the right approach to Flora, but much of his enchantment is predicated on fantasy. The formerly commitment-phobic is in new territory, unsure and dangerously romantic.

The Trial of True Love is a departure for Nicholson, whose previous novel, The Society of Others, was of an entirely different nature. This more romantically-inclined novel woven around the fictitious painter, Paul Marotte and Bron's own amorous adventures, Nicholson uses fragments of letters from the artist to his beloved, a governess; he also mines literature for sentiments from like-mined poets and authors, all building a case that Bron is forced to prove to himself. After all the hyperbole, Bron must test his assumptions in real life, with himself as the guinea pig. The elusive Flora leads Bron on a lively chase, as does her Marotte-collecting friend, Freddy Christiansen. Bron's personal lesson in love and self-deception is the most difficult of all, yet ultimately the most rewarding. Luan Gaines/2005.

Thirty-year-old Bron decides to write a book about love at first sight, a topic he knows nothing about (love and relationships are not Bron's strong point). How lucky it is then that he meets Flora, a gorgeous but troubled girl. Of course, he falls in love with her--at first sight. The relationship does not flourish, though. On the contrary. And the end that Nicholson chooses to give his book is both sappy and clichéd, although it might please those readers who need a happy ending, no matter how improbable.

It's a love story. It's a philosophy discussion. You'll like this book if either of those interest you. If you're looking for action, or even much activity, you'll hate it. My book club selected this book, and everyone had extreme opinions. Except me.

Nicely written, it intriuged me so much I started looking up details to see if they were true. That might be why I rather liked this book. But -- fair warning -- doing this will kinda spoil the biggest twist in the plot.

At age thirty, Bron, a London writer, remains commitment phobic, on the verge of what he hopes will be a successful career, with a contract to compose a book about love at first sight. Bron throws himself into this task with a vengeance, his premise based primarily on the life and love of Artist Paul Marotte. The young author, who has despaired of ever experiencing his topic first hand, moves to a cottage on the estate of his friend, where (viola!) Bron meets the beautiful and mysterious Flora. Casting aside the task at hand for more personal pursuits, Bron follows Flora to Amsterdam, suddenly embroiled in the confusion and angst of his own "love at first sight".

Captivated by Flora, Bron questions his own presumptions of romance and fidelity, the loving self closely tied to the true self. He is on the chase of his life, pursuing Flora, who is not only married but cynical, believing all men who desire her are only after one thing. She isn't sure how to assess Bron, who enjoys more success with her by posing theories on the nature of love than bringing his affections to fruition. For his part, Bron is so consumed with the ideal of Flora that he fails to analyze the attraction beyond her beauty and resistance, but Bron is eventually stimulated in his writing endeavors in this strange dance, forced to reassess his own assumptions. It is difficult to have sympathy for Flora, burdened with her beauty, resenting the covert stares of men. Flora's response to all and sundry is petulant, much like those who agonize over their burden, "don't hate me because I'm beautiful".

While in Amsterdam, Bron meets Freddy Christensen, an art collector who enjoys discussing the Nazi Occupation's usurpation of Jewish art collections during the war, as allowed by Regulation 58/42. The Germans saved the paintings, while exterminating their owners. Freddy gleefully attacks Bron's theories of true love, asking, "Is it possible that what a man wants to give is not what a woman wants to receive?" Bron believes that love can be given, while Freddy suggests it can only be taken. The quandary for Bron is in determining the right approach to Flora, but much of his enchantment is predicated on fantasy. The formerly commitment-phobic is in new territory, unsure and dangerously romantic.

The Trial of True Love is a departure for Nicholson, whose previous novel, The Society of Others, was of an entirely different nature. This more romantically-inclined novel woven around the fictitious painter, Paul Marotte and Bron's own amorous adventures, Nicholson uses fragments of letters from the artist to his beloved, a governess; he also mines literature for sentiments from like-mined poets and authors, all building a case that Bron is forced to prove to himself. After all the hyperbole, Bron must test his assumptions in real life, with himself as the guinea pig. The elusive Flora leads Bron on a lively chase, as does her Marotte-collecting friend, Freddy Christiansen. Bron's personal lesson in love and self-deception is the most difficult of all, yet ultimately the most rewarding. Luan Gaines/2005.

When do you know whether you're in love? Can one fall in love at first sight? Is falling in love, in its most intense form, a game only one can play? Author, William Nicholson attempts to explore these questions in The Trial of True Love, an exquisitely written meditation on the nature of love, art, and life.

Bron is a thirty-year-old writer living a rather dissipated life in North London. He's just split with his girlfriend Anna, perplexed at the fact that the relationship didn't work out. As Bron ponders his failing career, and genuflects on the fact that perhaps he didn't love Anna, he decides that the mystery of "true love" would be a perfect subject for a book.

Throwing himself into the project with all the enthusiasm he can muster, Bron travels to Tawhead, Devon, where he stays with Bernard, an old school friend, and pours himself into the task of writing. The young man is entranced by natural beauty of the Devon landscape, seeming to awaken something within him; he concludes that he needs to fall in love.

Bron has loved women, having dreamt of them all his life, but nothing prepares him for the first images of Flora, Bernard's beautiful cousin, as she steps out of the mist and into his life, "and in her eyes that secret gaze" - she even fills his dreams. "The morning's encounter or the emotions it had released in me, which I had not learned to respect, had somehow rendered by current life provisional."

As Bron falls in love with Flora, he begins to base his book on the transformative movement, with principal exemplar being fictitious artist Paul Marotte. Marotte, who suffered from "love shock," based much of his art on the basis of love at first site; it formed his thoughts, becoming intoxicated by the adventure of it all. Marotte first met his own true love in the middle of Amsterdam's Leidsegracht Bridge, and he freely admits that it was "a visual attempt to grasp, to possess, that moment of transformation."

It is only in Amsterdam, when Bron stays with Freddy Christensen, an art collector, and friend of Flora's that he can finally confront his muse and find out whether she truly loves him in return. But is Bron so entranced by Flora that he cannot see beyond her beauty and obvious physical perfection? Bron thinks of himself as a knight-errant, undimmed by postmodern irony. He even admits that he wants to rescue her, "because then I would be worthy of her love, and she would love me."

Through Bron, Nicholson is testing out the fundamental elements of love. It is only through he doggedly pursuit of Flora, through three different counties, that Bron can finally realize that the fundamental drive of his love life is not the discovery of some other person, but the securing of himself. He seeks love because he is afraid, and that the task of pursuing love is perhaps to ease his own fears.

In Bron, Nicholson has created a vulnerable, conflicted character, driven to act out, with love, devotion, and confusion impossibly entwined. This provocative romantic novel examines the recuperation of self by a man who cannot achieve closure by ordinary means, and who is aching to have answered the eternal questions of love, and fidelity, the mysterious nature of the bond between man and woman. Mike Leonard December 05.

"People use a conventional metaphor for falling in love at first sight. They say, "I was struck by lightning." I am in the position of a man who wishes to be struck by lightning and so walks about hatless in storms."

At age 30 Bron is a man, as they say, "in-between relationships." Living with his best friend Anna, who also happens to be his former girlfriend, he's working on a book on the topic of first love, and whether or not love at first sight truly does exist.

Little did he realize, love was about to come to him. Love came in the form of a beautiful, blonde, willowy and very mysterious woman, who also happened to be married, though unhappily. Her name, appropriately enough, is Flora. Bron comes upon her unexpectedly, while out walking near the summer home of a friend at whose home the two of them were both staying. Bron sees her, through the mist:

"And I, I fell in love at first sight. At the age of almost thirty, never having known since adolescence an unqualified desire, I dropped like an amateur skydiver from a plane, turning over into the helpless equilibrium of free fall."

Love is seldom simple, and this is even more the case when one of the two parties is already married. Add to that the fact one of the two, in this case Flora, remains aloof, unwilling to commit to any romantic feeling, despite sending out signals she's very interested, indeed. Bron finds himself in pursuit of his love, yet, at the same time, frustrated by her apparent rejection of him. The mixed signals drive him nearly mad, but despite it all he never doubts he's completely in love with Flora.

In the course of researching the French artist Paul Marotte, a man who'd experienced a rather spectular story of love at first sight, Bron finds himself in the city where Flora and her husband live. A local expert on Marotte also happens to be acquainted with Flora, and agrees to pass along a message to her, begging her to see Bron before he runs out of money and must return to England. But beneath all her vacillations, Flora hides a devastating secret, one that may, in the end, threaten the love that Bron feels for her.

Truly a lovely book, so well written. This is a such a deeply thought out book on the subject of the nature of true and lasting love, and love at first sight, written in extremely graceful, assured prose. The story, like the course of love itself, careens from twist to twist. Ultimately the reader may still not be positive on the topic of love at first sight, but the potential for love to conquer all will be made very clear.

In 1977 Anna kicks out her former boyfriend thirty years old John "Bron" Dearborn from her London flat. With no place to stay he moves to the country to live in the home of his friend Bernard. While rusticating, Bron decides to write a book about true love, using the real life of renowned French postimpressionist artist Paul Marotte as his case study to prove its' existence; the painter fell in love at first sight with the woman who became his muse, English governess Kate Summer.

To his shock, Bron falls in love with Bernard's cousin, Flora, but when he confesses how he feels to her; Flora Freeman flees for the continent. He follows her to Amsterdam where he meets art dealer Freddy Christiansen, owner of some of Marotte letters and paintings and a friend of Flora. Freddy offers to help Bron win Flora's heart because of their mutual regard for Marotte.

This novel is an intriguing look at true love through the quest of Bron to find such. He chooses legendary couples predominately Marotte and Summer though clever references to other renowned couples like Bacall and Bogart show up to add spice to the tale. Though the ending seems too schmaltzy and simplistic for the complex THE TRIAL OF TRUE LOVE, the delightful somewhat naive Bron and his co-conspirator Freddy make for a fine look into whether true love exists and if it does how and when will you know?

Harriet Klausner