"Enough about Love," by Herve Le Tellier

In the past few months, I have read, enjoyed, and posted here about several novels and memoirs set in France. The most recent is “Enough About Love” (Other Press, 2009, translation 2010), by Herve Le Tellier, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. This novel is the story of two affairs and the complications that ensue among the four main characters and their families. It is all very modern and French (at least according to our American stereotypes about the French…). I enjoyed reading it, and found the characters well drawn. But it seems to me that there is something hollow at the core of the story, or perhaps of the characters. Although the novel is all about love and passion, it somehow seems that at least some of the characters are on some level playing an intellectual game, standing outside themselves and watching the game with great interest. This is particularly true of Anna, a psychoanalyst having an affair with Yves, a writer. Yves, by the way, ends by writing a book that sounds (intentionally) suspiciously like this book, the one sitting on my desk as I write. Very “meta.” The novel is structured a bit like classical farce; the reader can almost imagine a carefully choreographed dance, or stage play, with various characters entering and exiting through various stage doors. This impression is reinforced by the organization of the book, which consists of dozens of short chapters, each titled with the name or names of certain characters, such as “Thomas,” “Louise and Romain,” and “Anna and Yves.” Something that bothered me about the book, though: At the risk of sounding old-fashioned and prudish (which I don’t think I am), a part of me -- the emotional part, not the intellectual part -- feels that the novel doesn’t represent accurately, or enough, the problems, even devastation, brought about by affairs that threaten and sometimes destroy longtime marriages, especially when there are children. In this novel, the characters briefly talk about difficulties, and about feeling torn by the situation, but the problems don’t feel viscerally real. And the young children of the original marriages seem remarkably and -- it seems to me -- unrealistically unaffected by the affairs, even going on outings with and liking their mothers’ lovers. This novel offers many pleasures, including the Paris setting and the virtuoso writing. I am glad to have read it. But finally it seems to me a bit too much of an intellectual exercise that doesn’t truly engage the heart.