"The Lovers"

Yvonne confronts loss, but also reflects on love, dissects love, experiences love, is pained by love, is let down by love, doubts love, is reassured by love, is supported by love, is pierced by love, and is surrounded by love: love from the past, love in the present, marital love, family love, love of new acquaintances, love of children, love of nature. The book is "The Lovers" ((HarperCollins, 2010), by the San Francisco writer Vendela Vida. Yvonne's reflections and experiences take place in the faraway country of Turkey, where as an American widow she has gone to remember her late husband and their honeymoon there almost thirty years before. In her rented house at the beach and in surrounding areas, her reflections are complicated by worries about her adult children, as well as by the various characters she encounters, influences, and is influenced by, with results varying from loving connections to great loss. Confused and overwhelmed by events past and present and by her own feelings, Yvonne is finally buoyed up by the love of her family and by her own inner strength. As I write this, I realize it sounds as if this novel is a sentimental, "inspiring," "I will survive" sort of book. But "The Lovers" is much more complex, more original than that. The story is both very specific in its details and universal in its portrayal of grief and love. Recommended.