Dear readers, If you’ve ever watched any kind of procedural, you know the drill: The main culprits behind any crime are love and money. But honestly, you could say the same about literature — and I’m not just talking about artistic motivation. What would the world of books be without jealousy as a theme? Without big miunsderstandings and gnawing green-eyed monsters and Rebeccas? Here are two favorites that hinge on romantic obsession. —Sadie “Climates,” by Andre MauroisFiction, 1928
I am sorry to be bossy but I am afraid there is no avoiding it: You must drop whatever you are doing and order this book. I am allowing for the length of time the average bookstore requires to get a book from the publisher, or, if you’re in a big library system, how long it might take for the e-book or hardcover to arrive from another branch; it’s not that you need to have it instantly — but you certainly do need it for the summer. (If you have been to my house I will have pressed it into your hands like a demented party favor, so you’re OK.) I don’t need you to love it. But I do want to talk about it with you. Here is how the author, a best seller in his era, describes “Climates”: Part 1. I love, and am not loved. Part 2. I am loved, and not love. Yes, and Proust ate an Oreo. The protagonist, Philippe Marcenat, hails from a wealthy French industrial family (as did the author). Book 1, “Odile,” takes the form of a confessional to one Isabelle de Cheverny, in which Philippe meets the ethereal beauty Odile Malet on a trip to Italy and becomes completely obsessed. “We love people because they secrete a mysterious essence,” Philippe says of this fanatical first love, “the one missing from our own formula to make us a stable chemical compound.” His conventional family reluctantly agrees to a match; but once married, Philippe finds he has little in common with Odile and — perhaps to maintain the emotional intensity of their relationship — he becomes jealous, at first irrationally, then less so. They loathe each other’s families. They can’t go on together, as Elvis said, with suspicious minds, and ultimately his possessiveness drives her away. It’s as painful and accurate a portrait of the indignities and joys and sadnesses of a certain kind of youthful bad relationship as I’ve ever read, and at moments your heart aches for Philippe even as you despise him. All that goes away in Part 2: Now jaded and embittered, Philippe himself becomes the object of desire for Isabelle, his confessor and new wife. Watching her sincere affection for Philippe and her real efforts to make their marriage work is all the more painful because Philippe, having suffered at Odile’s hands, knows better. You grow to truly hate him; but you keep reading. You read Sarah Bakewell’s introduction, find out a little bit more about the author’s biography; and need to read it all again. This book, almost 100 years old, has as much to say about the emotional human condition — about emotional climates — as any I can think of. Read if you like: Proust (although this is under 400 pages); Nancy Mitford, especially “The Blessing”; Claude Chabrol’s film “l”Enfer.” “The Hypnotist’s Love Story,” by Liane MoriartyFiction, 2011
A more conventional beach read, certainly, but if you see Moriarty’s name and think “Big Little Lies,” think again — or, at any rate, add a dash of “Baby Reindeer.” Ellen O’Farrell is an optimistic hypnotherapist who meets a widowed, single dad named Patrick on a dating app. He’s great — but, as she soon learns, there’s a catch: Patrick is being stalked by an ex called Saskia. She shows up everywhere he goes, and her surveillance naturally widens to include Ellen, who is in equal parts baffled, sympathetic and frightened. I will admit: This time around, I did wonder why they didn’t get a restraining order a bit sooner. (There’s an explanation, but still, by the time Saskia is letting herself into Ellen’s home and posing as a patient, I think most of us would find our sympathy fraying.) But by dividing the narrative between Ellen and Saskia, Moriarty makes us feel for everyone involved, and evokes the strangeness of a relationship that is, and then isn’t. “It sometimes seemed so peculiar and so wrong that you could be that intimate with someone, to go to sleep with him and wake up with him, to do really quite extraordinarily personal things together on a regular basis, and then, suddenly, you don’t even know his telephone number, or where he’s living or working, or what he did today or last week or last year,” muses Ellen. “It was actually strange that more people weren’t like Saskia, instead of being so well behaved and dignified about it.” Read if you like: Liane Moriarty, especially “What Alice Forgot”; “Homecoming,” by Kate Morton; “The Good Sister,” by Sally Hepworth. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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