Anna Gavalda’s love story: you can relax and spend two hundred pages in the pleasant expectation of a good end.
1. Everything is formed. The favorite of readers all over the world, Frenchwoman Anna Gavalda sees no reason to stop writing about love. About her is her seventh novel. 24-year-old Matilda has her whole life messed up. But a caring author will take her out of the mindless bustle of the Internet, booze and casual sex and arrange a meeting with a shy ugly cook that will change a lot. This is how the novels of Anna Gavalda are arranged: the characters’ affairs go out of hand, but everything will definitely work out.
2. Take life into your own hands. Waiting for Romeo for years, it is very easy to miss your true love. But in order to admit a mistake and correct it, not so much effort is required, Anna Gavalda convinces. And it’s not shameful sometimes to go to distant lands yourself and try, pacifying cynicism and pride, to fall in love with your neighbor: this really works.
3. Have fun. Gavalda knows the secret of books that are light, frank and very feminine, but not vulgar and talented. And in this unpretentious novel about love, irony and brilliant turns of language, the reality of scenes and images, and in places wisdom, far from pathos, give pleasure.
Translated from French by Tatiana Pozdneva. AST, 2015, 192 p.