The release date for the English version of 'On Love' by
Alain de Botton is Jan 2006. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Alain de Botton's On Love begins with the statement, "The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life." The book is a hip, charming, and devastatingly humorous reflection on the pleasures and perils of passionate love.
On a journey from Paris to London, the narrator falls in love with Chloe, and by the time they get at the baggage carousel, he knows he is in love. Though he despises her shoe taste, he adores her chestnut hair, pale neck, watery green eyes, the way she drives and consumes Chinese cuisine, the space between her teeth that makes them Kantian rather than Platonic, and her opinions on Heidegger's Being and Time.
Through the (Groucho) "Marxist" stage of accepting being loved by the unachievable beloved, through a fit of anhedonia—a medical term for the sickness brought on by the fear of complete happiness—and finally, through the nausea-inducing and terroristic strategies used when the beloved starts to mysteriously drift away, On Love charts the trajectory of their affair.
Alain de Botton effortlessly transitions from classic romantic literature like Madame Bovary, The Divine Comedy, and The Bleeding Heart—a self-help book for those who love too much. He is both academically perceptive and humorous. He is hilarious, lively, engaging, and schematically perfect.
"Can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble upon the man or woman of our dreams? On Love asks as it displays and examines for all of us the pain and exhilaration of love, filled with insightful observations and helpful diagrams." Is it not possible to pardon us for harboring a certain superstitious belief in a being that would satisfy our inescapable desires?"