If we like the novels of the Australian Liane Moriarty so much, it is undoubtedly for this subtle mixture of humor and psychodrama which makes her stories funny and tasty reflections on life and relationships.
This novel is one of his first, written in 2011 and belatedly translated following the huge success of his earlier titles; and we can say without hesitation that it is one of her best to date, precisely because of this skilful dosage of tragicomedy of which she has the secret.
Ellen is a 35-year-old hypnotherapist – a profession that earns her many taunts. Single, she has just met a charming surveyor on the internet and is floating on the cloud of the beginnings of a relationship. When her boyfriend reveals to her that he has been stalked for three years by a former partner, rather than being frightened by the news, Ellen finds herself curiously intrigued. As their relationship develops (furnished with multiple twists, comical and hilarious), we enter the head of the stalker who tells her own story in parallel.
Liane Moriarty takes a sharp psychologist’s look at love in all its forms – and its follies, because “love is a form of madness”, she writes from the mouth of one of her characters. But do you ever recover from old love wounds? This is the question she asks while reflecting between the lines on what it means to be in a relationship, to love and to let oneself go to happiness.
