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    Lovers
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    Lovers
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    Lovers
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Lovers

    By Daniel Arsand

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    For Sébastien Faure, the experience of love is so profound that, in its wake, he will be left with an almost occult understanding of the world, a potent knowledge bequeathed to him by passion that will endure even when the object of his love is no more.

    Sébastien is fifteen years old and already versed in the medicinal properties of plants and herbs when he meets the young nobleman Balthazar de Créon, whose life he saves after the latter is thrown from a horse. Struck by the boy’s beauty as much as by his talents as a healer, de Créon orders Sébastien to his manor some months later so he can instruct him in the ways of the court, hoping thus to install him as Louis XV’s surgeon. De Créon’s motives, however, are clouded by his lust for Sébastien, and after a brief period of restraint Balthazar and Sébastien loose both their passion and their imaginations. But it is 1749. Their affair scandalizes the French court, bringing the king’s wrath down upon them. Balthazar is eventually presented with an ultimatum: repudiate Sébastien and live, or do not, and die.

    Daniel Arsand’s slim, sublime Lovers is many things: a song of love and an ode to sensual abandon and the transformative powers of beauty; a richly imagined, atmospheric evocation of the French court; a fable about freedom and the heart’s indifference to social and class barriers; a deeply felt cry against those who, poor of heart and soul, refute the legitimacy of unconventional love. Above all, with its delectable prose, Lovers is itself a delight for the senses.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEuropa Editions
    Release dateJun 14, 2012
    ISBN9781787701212
    Unavailable
    Lovers
    Author

    Daniel Arsand

    Daniel Arsand was born in Avignon in 1950 and currently works as an editor with Éditions Phébus in Paris. He is the author of several novels, including The Land of Darkness, winner of the Prix Femina for First Fiction, and In Silence, winner of the Jean Giono Second Novel Grand Prix.

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    Reviews for Lovers

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    • 4/5
      It's very important, I think, that you go into this book knowing what to expect. That said, I'll let you know now.Superficially, Lovers is about Sébastian Faure and Balthazar de Créon, two young men living in 18th-century France, and the love that develops between them. The affair leads to tragedy for just about everyone involved, but giving you a summary like this grossly simplifies (and perhaps misconstrues) what this book really is. Because of all the things this book may be, the least of those is a narrative.Things happen, of course. But time doesn't work normally here, it's skewed. Simple moments are expanded to take several pages, while later on an entire decade passes by in the time it takes to read a single sentence. Transitions between events are virtually non-existent, leading to a certain sense of disorientation until the reader uses clues to find north again. But plot here is subordinated to the emotions of the characters, the turmoil of the events, and the meditations on love that Arsand prioritizes.As a non-traditional narrative, the book is structured unlike your average fiction novel. There are 100 chapters here, never more than a page or two each. The narrative jumps from third-person to second-person, from limited points of view to omniscience and back again in the space of a paragraph. At times, it's frantic; sometimes, it feels slow and meandering, like a dream. It is not subtle. Lovers is a book, not surprisingly, about love. What is surprising, however, is the tone the book takes: love is not all rainbows and unicorns here. Love leads people to do some pretty bad things, and the one thing love is -- for better or for worse -- is eternal. It's a more truthful, less misty-eyed approach, and while it won't resonate with the hopelessly romantic or those desperate for idealizations, it does prevent the book from getting too trite or cutesy.IN SUMMARY: Expect a highly stylized, morally ambiguous meditation on love. Do not expect a traditional narrative or a blind paean to love. Do not expect well-developed, three-dimensional characters you love. Do not expect answers to every question or a happy ending. Expect to take a few dozen pages to acclimate yourself to the style and the delivery. Do this, and you will enjoy the book.