Un amour retrouvé by Veronique de Bure

 Un amour retrouvé

by Veronique de Bure is a new book published by Flammarion.

Enchantingly profound and psychologically involving, the narrator of this story is Véronique the daughter of this lady and mother of 63 years, who, remained widow, at first refuses any kind of other serious involvements. No other men, no a dog, sometimes a serious occupation exactly as the one of a man can be, told one day to her daughter, smiling. 

Véronique is tremendously affectionated at her mother, although at the same time she is missing her father so badly. 

She misses him and the daily existence they experienced together: the philosophy of living of his father was beautiful: he was a colloquial guy, generous, opened with the various guests, friends, people who loved to spending time in their company. Beautiful memories.

One day her mother receives a letter: it's a letter from her first love! A love lost something like 50 years before. His name is Xavier and for a reason or another this love remained in a favolistic condition: that love-stories that a person can just imagine in their possible evolution without having never lived them in the reality because something interrupted the natural course of the story. 

In this case, the lady is tempted, oh truly tempted, and writes back to Xavier. It's, at first, just a correspondence, felt and waited, between the two. Then there is a first invitation to the house of Xavier, who lives in a part more warm of France. 

The mother of Véronique is excited after her little vacation; the story becomes to be more serious and this news (made by confidences,support, that involved at first only Véronique) must be shared, communicated also to the rest of the family. 

Véronique is grown up as a lonely child because her brothers are much more old than her. Anyway, the news is lived well by the rest of the family. Also the numerous family of Xavier lives the entrance of Véronique's mother with joy and happiness. A presence for the father is important.

Véronique doesn't imagine at first that the involvement would have been complete and total; she just imagined the platonic love-story of two people in the last and important phase of their existence. The mother is always more taken by Xavier and although Véronique is affectionated to her, she understands with terror that maybe...Maybe she is more happy with Xavier than not with her father; with that first love than not with the second one with which she built a family with... No: possible... She feels a profound irritation mounting in her soul because her father was simply...unique.

Times passes by and there are several misunderstandings on the way; a blessing not understood; but I am sure that what Véronique is realistically missing is her exclusive relationship with the mother: a mother with which she shared her feelings and thought while drinking a cup of tea eating biscuits and where there weren't barriers, walls, built only with the entrance in scene of Xavier.

Now her mother is more focused on her own existence, sharing time in the house where she lived with her husband, with Xavier: Véronique noticed that her mother is de fact building a new existence with Xavier, made of little new habits, before absolutely unexistents; Véronique sees with sadness objects, clothes, unknown, property of a stranger: someone who is not her father: what a sadness... in that house Véronique had only seen his father's dresses, his dad's items. No: it musn't be simple. Véronique's mother is missed by her friends and locals: sure a partner brings more energies and a tranformation of the existence, and the mother of Véronique can only does it. Plus: conversations with Xavier if at first relaxing becomes plenty of intellectuals walls for not offending him and his ideas, thinks Veronique.

The reader will follow till the end of the existences of Xavier and Véronique's mother. An evolution that sometimes will be sad, will hurt Véronique, will please her, will let her think controvertially at a character like the one of Xavier: Véronique will continue to miss her father and will continue of thinking at the dear old times: an evolution that will mean new children but also a differentiation of her existence without anymore her mother close to her.

When I received this book I thought that it would have been a quick reading, but I can tell you that it was not. It must be read with calm, digesting every phase, every page, every instant experienced by the protagonist; death and life dances together, considering the ages of the protagonists, and this love musn't be intended like a frivolous one but the last one of the existence of these two human beings; the last one that was, 50 years before, the first.

Feelings are filtered magistrally well and let thinks a lot the reader on the role, and presence of a mother in the existence of children of every age and what a serious alteration like the entrance in scene of a new man means with the time, seeing it through the mirror of the feelings of Véronique.

I want to continue to read Véronique's books, because she is touching. If you haven't done it, you should immediately go to the closest bookstore for buying a copy of this book and thinking sat in a café...Just thinking at the meaning of the existences.

Highly recommended.

I thank Flammarion for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori