Provocative title of the week: ‘Life Is Short and Desire Endless’

My thoughts, upon seeing the title of French author Patrick Lapeyre’s English-language debut:

1.) Guess this is not going to be the stereotype-busting novel about the French that I’ve been waiting for.
2.) Is that a DSK quote?

But while it may not be breaking any new ground, the description from American publisher Other Press suggests this is the type of sophisticated, affair-of-the-heart novel that the French do best.

This delicious novel revolves around a classic love triangle: two men and one woman. She is English, they are French and American. The Frenchman is married, the American is not. None of this makes any difference. The woman—elusive, unreliable, a classic femme fatale—flits back and forth between her two lovers, driving them both mad.
Lapeyre’s subtle, graceful, yet compulsively readable narrative shows us the folly of men who fall helplessly in love with women they don’t understand.

Patrick Lapeyre has won both the Prix Femina and the Prix du Livre Inter. Will you look for this book on June 19?

p.s. Dear France: I kid because I love.