But I find that talent, real, Douglas Kennedy, never expressed as well as when it adopts the look of a woman as in The pursuit of happiness or the discreet charms of married life.
This feminine point of view is for me, once again, the main attraction of this new novel by Kennedy.
For the story of Laura, in his radio operator evil couple, who meets someone in a 5-day conference being held in Boston, is both banal and predictable.
The novel mixes in fact quite traditional and universal themes: the betrayal of childhood dreams, the compromises of adulthood: the boredom of a discreet continuation of marital happiness somehow.
We are far from the best novels of the author, but this one still has a melancholy charm, that may please.
Attention from there, risk spoiler!
Despite this lack of relief, I fairly enjoyed this book ... almost to the end, but for quite wrong reasons: I never believed in the simplicity of the story.
So I confidently waited until the very end, a dramatic reversal, the revelation of a nefarious plot that I spent my time trying to guess ...
But this unpredictable turnaround, I waited and waited, it never came. Zai, zai, zai, zai.
The novel is completely linear and characters fades to the point of becoming completely insignificant.
Hence a relative disappointment and some frustration, but felt retrospectively: it was thus that? If we had to read it now by knowing the end, my judgment would probably be negative.
However, I consider that we should not in reverse, too overwhelming this novel.
Laura's character is very endearing and gradual letting go is described tactfully as his scruples and doubts that make the end all the more cruel.
Finally, with this history, Kennedy has made a kind of modern "Brief Encounter" (note that the heroine of the film David Lean's name is also ... Laura. Chance?!).