Rob My Heart and Hope to Die

It should have been a song; it could have been a poem. Finally, struggling to take shape, this nagging thought turned into a novel. It would have best suited a theatre, as a play in three acts: a heart to heart dialogue between two characters that serendipity threw together. Or was it fate, for the better or worse?

This unconventional love story unfolds like a play in three acts. A middle-aged middle-school teacher takes her classes on a trip to London. An accident rapidly breaks the well-organized routine of her journey. She undergoes an unexpected encounter that turns quickly into an odd relationship. Through situations that sometimes seem mindboggling to her but comical with hindsight, her vision of right and wrong gets rapidly undermined. Her welling feelings will transform her acceptance of a simple dutiful existence into an overwhelming desire to get a chance for a second life, with someone beyond her expectations. But it takes more than two to live a happy romance, and we only live once, don't we?

This weird tale of a heartrending dilemma evolves into questioning on women's condition in modern society, and our ability to embrace our destiny on our heart's command. Mind over matter and especially, mind over feelings is a rule that governs our existence while in this 21st century, we pretend desperately to be free to do what we want. Sentiments are only one, today often unmentionable, almost shameful part of our existence. The world we live those sentiments in is an entirely different matter. Happiness is beyond human nature for good reason.

Pretending to no fame, success, or bestselling qualities, this story is a time capsule preserving a philosophy of life. It is also a massage in a bottle to a particular person who is known to have declared not to believe in genuine love anymore. Feelings beyond sense, self-interest, and sexual appetite seem to evolve beyond modern understanding and became an outdated idea or value. Should we accept to deny that those feelings exist just because more and more people refuse to accept and to live them?

Reading this unusual romance can be light entertainment on a sunny beach or during a long journey, but it can also be unsetting if it rings a bell you do not want to hear.

If you are looking for a neat, professional entertainment written in batch to hook you into a complicated intrigue and an endless plot: pass your way! If you are digging for the future prize-winner author adulated by critics and editors: pass your way! But if you think that you can enjoy something less conventional, out of the mainstream, if you feel that you have the empathy to embrace a unique point of view and the tolerance for an unusual writing style, you are at the right place. Your patience and curiosity will be rewarded by a journey through a three-day-long bittersweet dream.