Description
This is a modern love story. She＊s Italian; he＊s from Exmoor, Southern England. They fall in love. So far, so romantic. It＊s long distance, visits to each other courtesy of cheap air tickets. We＊re jumping ahead though, since the book starts in the middle. We join our protagonists George and Laura when the cracks are beginning to appear. As Dylan Thomas puts it, we mark the couple ※walking arm in arm, observe their smiles, sweet invitations and inventions, see them lend love illustration, by gesture and grimace§. And we too ※watch them curiously, detect beneath the laughs what stands for grief, a vague bewilderment at things not turning right§. Two hearts yearning for intimacy and companionship but undone by what Eckhart Tolle calls ※the raw ego divested of its roles, with its pain-body, and its thwarted wanting which now turns into anger§. For both partners have ※failed to remove the fear and underlying sense of lack that is an intrinsic part of the egoic sense of self§. Today I Love You is Mills & Boon meets Bukowski & Camus: Self-sabotaging, personality-disordered, self-protecting, old-wounded, mind-gaming love.And in amongst it, we see moments and times of tenderness and connection, especially as we loop back to the beginning to that beach of meeting. The roles still intact and the dialogue rendered sweetly wooden by the fact that Laura is communicating in her second language, and George must grade his language for her to understand him. Onward we go with them, through the ups and downs, until we reach the denouement of their time together, with its strange possibility of a reprise. This essentially autobiographical novel derives its power, not from its author＊s imagination, but from its careful documenting of real life. As such, it captures something universal about romantic love. Whether we relate more to George or to Laura, they are everyman and everywoman. This story is a mirror of what we are and what is, not who we think we are and what should be. There is no escapism here, but there is an honesty which lets us know we are not alone. Baz Challabi, Author of ‘Shit doesn’t Happen’.
Laura is hard working, but restless and easily bored. She has changed from being a nurse to an administrator, but she is still unhappy. She is indispensable, and needs to be, just like George, and within that there is idealism, which creates energy. She is physically secure, but spends most of what she earns; just like George, she dreams of freedom. George is a forester, macho, but in a curious disillusioned sort of way; just as energetic, hard working and loyal as Laura. Far too young to think about retiring. As much as this is a love story it is also an exposition of the world of contract work, its testing of loyalties, its shifting politics, camaraderie and danger. In some sense this is a story about loss – of idealism, romanticism, passion, but for everything that is lost something else is gained.
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