Alain de Botton, an author known for tackling the big philosophical questions in accessible nonfiction (HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE), has the perfect narrator for his second novel. Julian Rhind-Tutt’s voice is tender, seductive, secretive, or open, as needed. Whichever tone he uses, listening to him is always a joy. What at first seems like an academic discourse on marriage becomes a droll, enjoyable listen filled with sardonic wit, sex, postmodernist wisdom, and a fairly clinical dissection of one particular marriage, that of Kirsten and Rabih, a Scottish woman and a Lebanese man. Although de Botton lays out the inevitability of their ordinary lives early on—“they will suffer . . . worry about money . . . one of them will have an affair . . . ”—Rhind-Tutt keeps the listening worthwhile and far from routine. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
The Course of Love: A Novel
Narrated by Julian Rhind-Tutt
Alain de BottonUnabridged — 7 hours, 6 minutes
The Course of Love: A Novel
Narrated by Julian Rhind-Tutt
Alain de BottonUnabridged — 7 hours, 6 minutes
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Overview
We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children-but no long-term relationship is as simple as “happily ever after.” The Course of Love explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. We see, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy-an annotation and a guide to what we are reading. As The New York Times says, “The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton's name in the mid-1990s....love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods, and insecurities to the page.”
This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience-fictional, philosophical, psychological-that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love. “There's no writer alive like de Botton, and his latest ambitious undertaking is as enlightening and humanizing as his previous works” (Chicago Tribune).
Editorial Reviews
The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton's name in the mid-1990s, when he was in his mid-20s and published three novels…that elegantly fussed over and annotated the neuroses of romance…Love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods and insecurities to the page…[de Botton] pithily covers our continual need to re-establish that we're wanted, the dangers of sharing the contents of our sexual imagination and dozens of other subcategories.
05/09/2016
Bestselling philosopher de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life), whose nonfiction tackles life’s big questions, traces the intricate and winding path of a long-term relationship in his second novel. Rabih Khan, from Beirut, and Kirsten McClelland, from Scotland, meet and fall in love. De Botton outlines the contours of a love that endures yet inevitably evolves over the years, through Rabih’s sudden proposal, the birth of their two children, and the act and consequences of adultery. The story of Rabih and Kirsten is interspersed—on almost every page—with de Botton’s italicized manifesto of universal truths about love and romance, such as “Love is a search for completion.” As readers watch Rabih and Kirsten work, fight, make love, and take risks, de Botton does something interesting: he will rewind a scene, usually an argument, and play it again to illustrate how loving, mature people should react, rather than how they typically do. At points, de Botton seems distant from his characters, as if they were created to illustrate his beliefs about love. But when Rabih and Kirsten are debating the details of petty humiliations and letdowns, they feel completely alive and real. The novel is a valuable commentary on the state of modern marriage and it reassures us that troubles are a normal, even necessary, part of the journey. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta, Zoe Pagnamenta Agency. (June)
PRAISE FOR THE COURSE OF LOVE:
“The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton’s name in the mid-1990s.... love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods and insecurities to the page.”
–The New York Times
“There's no writer alive like de Botton, and his latest ambitious undertaking is as enlightening and humanizing as his previous works.”
–Chicago Tribune
"For me, the publication of any book by Alain de Botton is as much a reason for celebration as it is for cerebration, and his novel The Course of Love is a satisfying look at relationships and the perils of romantic love. This public philosopher writes with verve."
–Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com)
"This book is like a self-help book for dating and relationships, disguised as a novel...We understand what each person is thinking and why, with de Botton’s insights sprinkled in. It made me rethink what it means to be happy in a relationship."
–The Cut (NYMag.com)
“[De Botton] analyzes Rabih's feelings, especially, with the finesse of a therapist—and in fact there is more than a whiff of the couch in this exemplary tale...Readers looking for insights and guidance will find plenty.”
–NPR
“An engrossing tale [that] provides plenty of food for thought.”
–People (Best New Books pick)
"Assured...The author deftly delivers both sides of the marriage, exploring the incompatible interplay of romantic love and practical love...Part literary novel, part self-help handbook, “The Course of Love” certainly illuminates the subtle and not-so-subtle fissures of one modern marriage and what it takes for two people to stay together through the years...this nontraditional novel is generous in its spirit and message."
–San Francisco Chronicle
"A cunning novel that tells of a couple from the spark of first love, maintenance through the demands of children and career, the challenges of boredom, and aging. What happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence?"
–San Francisco Chronicle
"A living, volatile portrait of how two very different souls love, complement and aggravate each other. You may not agree with all of de Botton’s thoughts on marriage, but it’s wonderful how he makes such a big, sweeping subject out of routine existence...[De Botton's] uncanny access to Rabih’s and Kirsten’s contrasting feelings, aspirations, insecurities and resentments at every changing stage of their love lives makes the novel a marvel."
–Seattle Times
'“The always-intriguing de Botton, who returns to fiction after 20 years and numerous nonfiction books, aims to answer the question, What is it like to be married for awhile? The answers are often funny but also quite moving, thought provoking, forgiving, and drenched in truth.”
—Booklist
"An ambitious book; one that resolves, if it cannot change art, to widen our expectations of what we might go to a novel for. The lives of Kirsten and Rabih...help us in a solemn way to examine the illusions and pains that loving relationships are heir to. The Course of Love testifies that discontented families, if we cannot call them unhappy ones, are much alike after all."
—Flavorwire
“Well-observed and imbued with a tenderness that feels authentic and uncynical. It may even save some marriages. My bet is that if de Botton’s name were taken off this book it would be fêted by the sort of people who are in thrall to Milan Kundera and Adam Thirlwell. He wants us to feel less alone — and that’s not such a bad thing.”
—Evening Standard (UK)
“The course of true love may not run smooth, but the storytelling certainly does in this wise, humane and irresistibly readable history of an appealingly nuanced relationship. De Botton deftly moves us through time, weaving in philosophical interludes that showcase his essayistic gifts, so that before we know it we have lived a whole life with these two, and they are just getting started. De Botton directs his ferocious intelligence at the most complex puzzle of all, and it seems that no intellectual or emotional problem surpasses his ability to solve it.”
—Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
“The Course of Love is a complete delight. Not surprisingly, I feel that Alain de Botton not only wrote it for me, but also that we must have been conversing on these subjects happily and deeply, privately or in my dreams.”
—Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of Away and Lucky Us
Praise for On Love:
"The Romantic Movement sheds light on the nature of relationships...The method of telling much and showing little produces a good deal of wit, cogency, and humor."
—John Updike, The New Yorker
"A reader gets whiffs of Donald Barthelme, Julian Barnes, Woody Allen...De Botton borrows exuberantly, and well, from forebears [and] therein lies the buoyant charm of this approach."
—Lisa Zeidner, The New York Times Book Review
"Smart and ironic...The success of On Love has much to do with its beautifully modeled sentences, its wry humor, and its unwavering deadpan respect for the reader's intelligence."
—Francine Prose, The New Yorker
Praise for The Architecture of Happiness:
“De Botton has a marvelous knack for coming at weighty subjects from entertainingly eccentric angles.”
—The Seattle Times
"An elegant book. . . . Unusual . . . full of big ideas. . . . Seldom has there been a more sensitive marriage of words and images."
—The New York Sun
"With originality, verve, and wit, de Botton explains how we find reflections of our own values in the edifices we make. . . . Altogether satisfying."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"De Botton is high falutin' but user friendly. . . . He keeps architecture on a human level."
—Los Angeles Times
Praise for How Proust Can Change Your Life:
"Delightfully original.... As well as being criticism, biography, literary history, and a reader's guide to Proust's masterpiece, this is a self-help book in the deepest sense of the term."
—The New York Times
"One of my favorite books of the year.... Seriously cheeky, cheekily serious."
—Julian Barnes
"Curious, humorous, didactic, and dazzling.... It contains more human interest and play of fancy than most fiction."
—John Updike, The New Yorker
"A witty, elegant book that helps us learn what reading is for."
—Doris Lessing
"A wonderful meditation on aspects of Proust in the form of a self-help book. Very enjoyable."
—Sebastian Faulks
"Funny and very refreshing."
—San Francisco Chronicle
Praise for The Consolations of Philosophy:
“Wonderfully original, quirky.... De Botton finds inspiration where others might fail to look.”
—Newsday
"An enjoyable read... In clear, witty prose, de Botton...sets some of [the philosophers'] ideas to the mundane task of helping readers with their personal problems.... The quietly ironic style and eclectic approach will gratify many postmodern readers."
—Publishers Weekly
02/15/2016
Though de Botton is best known for books like The Consolations of Philosophy and How Proust Can Change Your Life, he opened his writing career in 1993 with the novel Essays in Love (called On Love in this country). This second novel follows what happens to Edinburgh couple Rabih and Kirsten after that first heart-thumping moment of attraction.
Alain de Botton, an author known for tackling the big philosophical questions in accessible nonfiction (HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE), has the perfect narrator for his second novel. Julian Rhind-Tutt’s voice is tender, seductive, secretive, or open, as needed. Whichever tone he uses, listening to him is always a joy. What at first seems like an academic discourse on marriage becomes a droll, enjoyable listen filled with sardonic wit, sex, postmodernist wisdom, and a fairly clinical dissection of one particular marriage, that of Kirsten and Rabih, a Scottish woman and a Lebanese man. Although de Botton lays out the inevitability of their ordinary lives early on—“they will suffer . . . worry about money . . . one of them will have an affair . . . ”—Rhind-Tutt keeps the listening worthwhile and far from routine. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
2016-03-31
More treatise than novel, this book takes a forensic approach to marriage. De Botton, a Swiss-born intellectual and TED-talker who lives in London, has long been preoccupied with human weakness, offering tips to overcome it. Via such nonfiction hybrids as How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006), he has charmed and edified millions of readers. Now de Botton circles back to fiction—his only previous novel, On Love (1993), pondered the custom of falling in and out of love—with the story of a marriage. He presents a case study of a "Scottish wife and her Middle Eastern husband," one Kirsten McLelland and Rabih Khan. The author sums up his plot on Page 16: "They will suffer, they will frequently worry about money, they will have a girl first, then a boy, one of them will have an affair..."; he has no interest in quotidian suspense. De Botton supplies some nice insights on kindness and can certainly turn a phrase—"there is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry"—but he makes this story a slog. He punctuates it with long, italicized paragraphs of psychologizing, some of it banal and some of it poppycock. It's as if a fussy uncle has hijacked one's reading. Without naming him, de Botton leans heavily on Freud, depicting his couple as stymied by childhood traumas (her father abandons her; his mother dies) and infantile longings. The straw men here are "Romanticism" and sexual fidelity, which de Botton seems to find equally absurd. (Rabih, a middling architect, does a lot of whining about monogamy.) There is a reason the heart on the book's cover is black, although Kirsten and Rabih seem to do a better job than most: "It's the sticking around that is the weird and exotic achievement." A philosopher of the everyday can't help but write marriage as a primer.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171235147 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 06/14/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,166,725 |
Read an Excerpt
The Course of Love
The hotel is on a rocky outcrop, half an hour east of Málaga. It has been designed for families and inadvertently reveals, especially at mealtimes, the challenges of being part of one. Rabih Khan is fifteen and on holiday with his father and stepmother. The atmosphere among them is somber and the conversation halting. It has been three years since Rabih’s mother died. A buffet is laid out every day on a terrace overlooking the pool. Occasionally his stepmother remarks on the paella or the wind, which has been blowing intensely from the south. She is originally from Gloucestershire and likes to garden.
A marriage doesn’t begin with a proposal, or even an initial meeting. It begins far earlier, when the idea of love is born, and more specifically the dream of a soul mate.
Rabih first sees the girl by the water slide. She is about a year younger than him, with chestnut hair cut short like a boy’s, olive skin, and slender limbs. She is wearing a striped sailor top, blue shorts, and a pair of lemon-yellow flip-flops. There’s a thin leather band around her right wrist. She glances over at him, pulls what may be a halfhearted smile, and rearranges herself on her deck chair. For the next few hours she looks pensively out to sea, listening to her Walkman and, at intervals, biting her nails. Her parents are on either side of her, her mother paging through a copy of Elle and her father reading a Len Deighton novel in French. As Rabih will later find out from the guest book, she is from Clermont-Ferrand and is called Alice Saure.
He has never felt anything remotely like this before. The sensation overwhelms him from the first. It isn’t dependent on words, which they will never exchange. It is as if he has in some way always known her, as if she holds out an answer to his very existence and, especially, to a zone of confused pain inside him. Over the coming days, he observes her from a distance around the hotel: at breakfast in a white dress with a floral hem, fetching a yogurt and a peach from the buffet; at the tennis court, apologizing to the coach for her backhand with touching politeness in heavily accented English; and on an (apparently) solitary walk around the perimeter of the golf course, stopping to look at cacti and hibiscus.
It may come very fast, this certainty that another human being is a soul mate. We needn’t have spoken with them; we may not even know their name. Objective knowledge doesn’t come into it. What matters instead is intuition, a spontaneous feeling that seems all the more accurate and worthy of respect because it bypasses the normal processes of reason.
The infatuation crystallizes around a range of elements: a flip-flop hanging nonchalantly off a foot; a paperback of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha lying on a towel next to the sun cream; well-defined eyebrows; a distracted manner when answering her parents and a way of resting her cheek in her palm while taking small mouthfuls of chocolate mousse at the evening buffet.
Instinctively he teases out an entire personality from the details. Looking up at the revolving wooden blades of the ceiling fan in his room, in his mind Rabih writes the story of his life with her. She will be melancholy and street-smart. She will confide in him and laugh at the hypocrisy of others. She will sometimes be anxious about parties and around other girls at school, symptoms of a sensitive and profound personality. She’ll have been lonely and will never until now have taken anyone else into her full confidence. They’ll sit on her bed playfully enlacing their fingers. She, too, won’t ever have imagined that such a bond could be possible between two people.
Then one morning, without warning, she is gone and a Dutch couple with two small boys are sitting at her table. She and her parents left the hotel at dawn to catch the Air France flight home, the manager explains.
The whole incident is negligible. They are never to meet again. He tells no one. She is wholly untouched by his ruminations. Yet, if the story begins here, it is because—although so much about Rabih will alter and mature over the years—his understanding of love will for decades retain precisely the structure it first assumed at the Hotel Casa Al Sur in the summer of his sixteenth year. He will continue to trust in the possibility of rapid, wholehearted understanding and empathy between two human beings and in the chance of a definitive end to loneliness.
He will experience similarly bittersweet longings for other lost soul mates spotted on buses, in the aisles of grocery stores, and in the reading rooms of libraries. He will have precisely the same feeling at the age of twenty, during a semester of study in Manhattan, about a woman seated to his left on the northbound C train; and at twenty-five in the architectural office in Berlin where he is doing work experience; and at twenty-nine on a flight between Paris and London after a brief conversation over the English Channel with a woman named Chloe: the feeling of having happened upon a long-lost missing part of his own self.
For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from a glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic and substantial conclusion: that he or she may constitute a comprehensive answer to the unspoken questions of existence.
The intensity may seem trivial—humorous, even—yet this reverence for instinct is not a minor planet within the cosmology of relationships. It is the underlying central sun around which contemporary ideals of love revolve.
The Romantic faith must always have existed, but only in the past few centuries has it been judged anything more than an illness; only recently has the search for a soul mate been allowed to take on the status of something close to the purpose of life. An idealism previously directed at gods and spirits has been rerouted towards human subjects—an ostensibly generous gesture nevertheless freighted with forbidding and brittle consequences, for it is no simple thing for any human being to honor over a lifetime the perfections he or she might have hinted at to an imaginative observer in the street, the office, or the adjoining airplane seat.
It will take Rabih many years and frequent essays in love to reach a few different conclusions, to recognize that the very things he once considered romantic—wordless intuitions, instantaneous longings, a trust in soul mates—are what stand in the way of learning how to be with someone. He will surmise that love can endure only when one is unfaithful to its beguiling opening ambitions, and that, for his relationships to work, he will need to give up on the feelings that got him into them in the first place. He will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm.
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