and what did they decide..? 

Andre Aciman: Room on the Sea. 2025. Faber.

It is New York, it is hot and they - a man and a woman - feel swetty. They meet in a lobby waiting to be called in, to maybe chosen as a member of the jury. They do not want to be chosen and he, as a layer, gives a tip, to this woman, a psychiatrist (?) how to avoid to be chosen as one.

Andre Aciman writes this couple, this pair of people in their sixties (and I loved it, that tey are not young, they have lived, they have lives behind them, experiences yet they are facing something new, they feel, love, have lust to live and to love) to the love story.

In this love story - structures as one day at a time, from Monday to Friday - there are multiple parties. There is New York, there is Italy (which they both love), their spouses, grown up children and grandkids but most of all, and what I think Andre Aciman does best, is the perception and writing about the perceptions of the feelings, the rising sudden feeling of liking, of loving, of catharsis what to do - should one jump to this feeling, letting it go or/and let that feeling take them to new places in their well put together, established / well off lives or should this only be a soon to rembered memory, a passing event, to think in silence and alone, a chance they did not persue.

I loved (this somehow oldfashioned) book. There was only dialogue, like in an old Hepburn movie like in Casablanca type and the feeling the atmosphere was well put together, skilled, the dialogue smooth and believable as the charatcters, well written, too.

An oldfashioned love story, nothing new, no gimmicks, no aiming for something this was not. Just a story, well written.