Three hypnotic novellas about obsessional love, missed connections, and enduring regret by the bestselling author of
Call Me by Your Name
.
The short fictions in
Room on the Sea
deal with the heart-wrenching vicissitudes of amorous ambivalence, in André Aciman's inimitably nostalgic, lyric style.
"The Gentleman from Peru" tells the story of the life-changing encounter of a group of friends with an enigmatic solitary guest in a hotel on the Amalfi Coast. "Room on the Sea" is a dialogue between a man and a woman who meet on jury duty and embark on a complex relationship. "Mariana" is a modern retelling of a famous seventeenth-century novel about a love affair between a nun and a swashbuckling, unreliable aristocrat.
No one writes about the ups and downs, the yeses and nos, of contemporary love like Aciman. As
The Times
(London) writes: ”You don't so much read André Aciman's novels as tumble breathlessly into them.“