This novel of thwarted love is also the novel of an era.
Amélie and Vincent meet as young men at the Sorbonne in the late 80s. Each felt love at first sight, but didn’t dare admit it to the other: neither felt “up to it”, neither made the first move, neither had the maturity to seize their happiness…
They make an appointment, and the young woman is late: just a few minutes later, it wasn’t just an appointment she was missing, it was her life.
Then life takes over, carrying them off in spite of themselves towards fates they no longer control, taking them through forks in the road like doors, then corridors, ten years, twenty years, thirty years…
We follow Amélie and Vincent’s intimate and professional paths in parallel, and each time the hazards of life bring them together again, it’s not “the right time”.
« Thirty years we’ve known each other… Marriages, divorces, bereavements, children, hundreds of journeys, sometimes to the ends of the earth, successes, failures, dashed hopes, lost childhood dreams, fallen childhoods… Thirty years of dreams and desire ».
