This is a very short book – and an even shorter read. Which makes me sad. Why are fast-paced books more expensive in terms of cost per minute of entertainment? Every few days I check the international literature shelf at my local bookshop to see if any new books have been added. I’ve developed an ability to spot the new additions since I’ve pretty much memorised the regular contents of that shelf – some horror, some classics (Jane Austen etc) and a few books written in English about Italians. Think: “The Italian Romance”, “Why Italians Are Always Late”, etc. This was an impulse purchase.

This book reads like a script – almost all dialogue. It covers 10 weeks of conversations between a couple going to couples counselling.  Each week the couple meets up at a bar for one hour before their counselling session. And each hour makes up one chapter. A very speedy read. One sitting in fact. I leant it to Ambre because I saw she was attempting to reread Virginia Woolf’s: To The Lighthouse and knew that wasn’t going to last long. I thought maybe if she needed a break, she could use a short and sweet book. Here’s what she had to say (I agree totally and whole-heartedly with her comments, she and I rarely differ when it comes to opinions on books):

“Super short but the author captures both their characters, and marriage super well. There’s obviously animosity because she (the leading lady) cheated on her husband, but you can tell their relationship is so strong because they can joke about things, like who they might move on to if they ever broke up. I love that you never get to hear anything from the actual therapy session – because that’s the time they have alone for themselves”

Ambre is right. I will add that it was in part a fast read because I was imagining their witty back and forth to be very fast spoken in real time. The characters are both smart, not in an intellectual way, but in knowing each other truly and having the same cultural references to bounce off of each other with. I used the word witty already but this book has a lot of it. Wit.