Atmosphere of Love

Andre Maurois who wrote so sympathetically of the lives of Disraeli and Shelley (Ariel) has created here a novel of incomparable charm and originality. Atmosphere of Love is a study of a man and the two women he loved. In the opening chapters, Philippe Marcenat narrates his version of his affair with the woman he loved, madly, jealously; in the latter part of the novel the mirror is held up at a different angle and Marcenat's second wife presents her estimate of her husband. By this original device, we have a subtle and a living portrait of the hero. At the same time, it is an analysis, profound and clarifying, of the nature and the course of love and the devastating effect of human jealousy. Virginia Woolf, the author of Orlando says of this novel: It would be difficult to find a fellow to it in English. One cannot bring to mind at the moment any living English writer so intelligent, so dextrous, so accomplished as M. Maurois.


Genre: Literary Fiction