The Idea of Love
-
- $6.99
-
- $6.99
Publisher Description
In her dark and witty third novel, award-winning Booker Prize longlisted author Louise Dean explores the perplexing marriages of two couples living in Provence.
Richard is the head of sales in Africa for a pharmaceutical company. He spends most of his time away on business, sleeping with other women and pushing psychiatric drugs on a developing market. Back in Provence, he and his wife, Valérie, no longer share a bed, and his teenage son, Maxence, is hearing voices. When Richard begins an affair with a neighbour, Rachel, he discovers that Valérie, too, is having an affair - with Rachel's husband, Jeff. Suddenly, a routine trip to Africa to sell pharmaceuticals is more than he can handle and his life starts to implode as he realizes that the idea of a life full of that love he has cherished is a mere illusion.
'With wry humour, Dean captures the gloom of existences imploding in incongruous surroundings.' The Observer
'Engaging...it is hard to stop turning the pages...arresting...fizzes with talent.' Sunday Times
'Wonderfully complex and original novel about desire, disappointment and mental illness, largely set in ex-pat Provence...Louise Dean's lovely rendering of her awful people makes The Idea of Love an enormous delight.' The Independent
'An acute, cynical wit... An unforgettable study of the dark side of the mind.' The Times
'This dark novel is interesting and original, a study of love but not a romance and a story with many morals.' The Telegraph
'In her third novel, Louise Dean regards with a sardonic eye a group of scalded lovers ricocheting between desire, despair and dipsomania.....Dean's portrayal of Maxence's madness and his mission to save souls is tender and funny, and lifts the novel far above the torrid soul-searching of its narcissistic lovers.' The Guardian
'Louise Dean's third novel is a careful dissection of our search for love in its many forms – sexual, religious, parental, and brotherly....Dean has a deliciously wry eye for the convincing detail.' Literary Review
'An unusual but fascinating story that examines the different ways in which people face the harsh realities of love gone wrong.' Tatler
Louise Dean is founder and course director at the worldwide writing school for novelists The Novelry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this unrelentingly bleak tale, Dean (This Human Season) explores the lives of two couples and how precarious sanity can be. Richard, an English pharmaceutical representative selling psychotropic drugs in Africa, and his wife, Val rie, an unapologetic French hedonist, live in Provence next to Jeff, a brash American, and his English wife, Rachel, who is determined to save the world one child at a time. That hope is soundly defeated after trips to an African orphanage send Jeff into Val rie's arms, and Rachel's religious outbursts impede her cause. Rachel, though, isn't the only person affected by the betrayal: Richard slowly descends into a nervous breakdown and wonders if his wife ever loved him. Meanwhile, Richard and Val rie's teenage son appears to be slipping into madness. The puzzle pieces rearrange throughout the novel, sometimes falling into unexpected patterns the reader may not see coming. Dean's gift for descriptive prose is evident, and her edgy story will shake up traditional ideas about what exactly love is. It may also send depressed readers straight for a mood stabilizer.
