essays in love alain de botton review

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Book Review: Essays in Love // Alain de Botton

As soon as the final word on the final page of Essays in Love ended, I felt a strong impulse to write about how this book made me feel, so here goes.

This book is a rarity. Feeling so content and warm when reading a book happens only on occasion, and this book has been successful in doing so. Written by Alain de Botton as his first novel in such a beautifully poetic manner, Essays in Love documents a passionate and tender relationship between a man and a woman, which happened coincidentally and ends inevitably. Told from the man’s perspective, his philosophical stance on love for his other half Chloe paints an intricate picture of how intense love can be. He marks each part of the relationship in chronological order, each chapter as a mini philosophical essay, going into great depth about simple details of their relationship such as seducing her, saying ‘I love you’, silently arguing through ‘romantic terrorism’ and wanting to commit suicide when it’s over. This all may sound slightly obsessive – which it essentially is – but through de Botton’s flowing and softly-spoken writing style, it’s as if the novel is being whispered to you (in the least creepy way possible).

The novel begins with their meeting on a flight, which sounds clichéd but it captures the surprise and coincidence love can bring. The characterisation of the speaker depicts him as a clearly highly intelligent and profound man, whose analytical thinking allows us directly into his mind and how well he can breakdown and evaluate love. As the chapters progress, so too does the relationship, which starts off awkward but grows and grows into a strong adoration for one another. His observations of the little mannerisms and physical attributes of Chloe which he found to be beautiful were extremely poignant, as are the moral questions he asks about love such as “If she really is so wonderful, how could she love someone like me?” and “Is it not my right to be loved and her duty to love me?”

The relationship between the speaker and Chloe is one of normality; it’s nothing spectacular. What really makes it so special, however, is the way the story is told in such detail and depth. Each sentence is sculpted so flawlessly; the last couple of chapters are particularly stunning, as the book doesn’t simply describe being in love, but also being out of love, and these chapters deal with getting over a break-up in such a raw and realistic manner. Describing Chloe’s affair with the speaker’s work partner Will was heart-wrenching to read, particularly due to how deep his affections for her were, but the beauty of it is how realistic it is – it’s not all magic and fairy tales, it’s just an ordinary relationship (if such a thing exists).

The book often references philosophers and analogies from philosophy which may be slightly confusing if you don’t have prior philosophical knowledge; however this does not affect the book as a whole. It can, at times, be quite challenging to grasp due to the scope of language used, but this generally makes the book so much more sophisticated.

Whether you are falling in, have fallen or have fallen out of love, Essays in Love will explain all the complexities, unanswered questions, underlying feelings and strange sensations love seems to entail. This book is a treasure, one which is highly underrated, and I am left blown away by its beauty. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to recommend this novel to everyone and anyone who’s willing to listen.

Alain de Botton: the three ingredients for love

The philosopher and author writes about the meaning of love and why the lonely are the real experts

If ever there was a time to celebrate love it's in the darker periods when we most need our faith restored. It's why Laura Lambert, the founder of ethical jewellery brand Fenton, decided to call on her favourite writers to compile an anthology of expressions of love - what it means and how it manifests itself.

Notes on Love was curated during the first lockdown, and was self-published in October, featuring contributions from high-profile names such as Candice Brathwaite, Elizabeth Day and Alain de Botton. Here, we share an abridged version of de Botton's essay on the three components that characterise love - and why the lonely are the best placed to be experts on the subject.

Alain de Botton: What is love?

One way to get a sense of why love should matter so much, why it might be considered close to the meaning of life, is to look at the challenges of loneliness. Too often, we leave the topic of loneliness unmentioned: those without anyone to hold feel shame; those with someone (a background degree of) guilt. But the pains of loneliness are an unembarrassing and universal possibility. We shouldn’t – on top of it all – feel lonely about being lonely. Unwittingly, loneliness gives us the most eloquent insights into why love should matter so much. There are few greater experts on the importance of love than those who are bereft of anyone to love. It is hard to know quite what all the fuss around love might be about until and unless one has, somewhere along the way, spent some bitter unwanted passages in one’s own company.

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When we are alone, people may well strive to show us kindness; there may be invitations and touching gestures, but it will be hard to escape from a background sense of the conditionality of the interest and care on offer. We are liable to detect the limits of the availability of even the best disposed companions and sense the restrictions of the demands we can make upon them. It is often too late – or too early – to call. A radical editing of our true selves is the price we must pay for conviviality.

All these quietly soul- destroying aspects of single life, love promises to correct. In the company of a lover, there need be almost no limits to the depths of concern, care, attention and license we are granted. We will be accepted more or less as we are; we won’t be under pressure to keep proving our status. It will be possible to reveal our extreme, absurd vulnerabilities and compulsions and survive. It will be OK to have tantrums, to sing badly and to cry. We will be tolerated if we are less than charming or simply vile for a time. We will be able to wake them up at odd hours to share sorrows or excitements. Our smallest scratches will be of interest.

In the presence of the lover, evaluation will no longer be so swift and cynical. They will lavish time. As we tentatively allude to something, they will get eager and excited. They will say ‘go on’ when we stumble and hesitate. They will accept that it takes a lot of attention to slowly unravel the narrative of how we came to be the people we are. They won’t just say ‘poor you’ and turn away. And instead of regarding us as slightly freakish in the face of our confessions, they will kindly say ‘me too.’ The fragile parts of ourselves will be in safe hands with them. We will feel immense gratitude to this person who does something that we had maybe come to suspect would be impossible: know us really well and still like us. Surrounded on all sides by lesser or greater varieties of coldness, we will at last know that, in the arms of one extraordinary, patient and kindly being worthy of infinite gratitude, we truly matter.

2. Admiration

In Plato’s dialogue, The Symposium, the playwright Aristophanes suggests that the origins of love lie in a desire to complete ourselves by finding a long lost ‘other half’. At the beginning of time, he ventures in playful conjecture, all human beings were hermaphrodites with double backs and flanks, four hands and four legs and two faces turned in opposite directions on the same head. These hermaphrodites were so powerful and their pride so overweening that Zeus was forced to cut them in two, into a male and female half – and from that day, each one of us has nostalgically yearned to rejoin the part from which he or she was severed. We don’t need to buy into the literal story to recognise a symbolic truth: we fall in love with people who promise that they will in some way help to make us whole. At the centre of our ecstatic feelings in the early days of love, there is a gratitude at having found someone who seems so perfectly to complement our qualities and dispositions. We do not all fall in love with the same people because we are not all missing the same things.

Our personal inadequacies explain the direction of our tastes

The aspects we find desirable in our partners speak of what we admire but do not have secure possession of in ourselves. We may be powerfully drawn to the competent person because we know how our own lives are held up by a lack of confidence and tendencies to get into a panic around bureaucratic complications. Or our love may zero in on the comedic sides of a partner because we’re only too aware of our tendencies to sterile despair and cynicism. Our personal inadequacies explain the direction of our tastes. We hope to change a little in their presence, becoming – through their help – better versions of ourselves.

We shouldn’t expect to get there all by ourselves. We can, in certain areas, be the pupils and they the teachers. We usually think of education as something harsh imposed upon us against our will. Love promises to educate us in a very different way. Through our lovers, our development can start in a far more welcoming and energising way: with deep excitement and desire. Love gives us the energy to construct and hold on to the very best story about someone. We are returned to a primal gratitude. We thrill around apparently minor details: that they have called us, that they are wearing that particular pullover, that they lean their head on their hand in a certain way, that they have a tiny scar over their left index finger or a particular habit of slightly mispronouncing a word... It isn’t usual to take this kind of care over a fellow creature, to notice so many tiny touching, accomplished and poignant things in another. This is what parents, artists or a God might do. We can’t necessarily continue in this vein forever, the rapture is not necessarily always entirely sane, but it is one of our noblest and most redemptive pastimes – and a kind of art all of its own – to give ourselves over to appreciating properly for a time the real complexity, beauty and virtue of another human being.

One of the more surprising and at one level perplexing aspects of love is that we don’t merely wish to admire our partners; we are also powerfully drawn to want to possess them physically. The birth of love is normally signalled by what is in reality a hugely weird act; two organs otherwise used for eating and speaking are rubbed and pressed against one another with increasing force, accompanied by the secretion of saliva. We can only start to understand the role of sexuality in love if we can accept that it is not – from a purely physical point of view – necessarily a uniquely pleasant experience in and of itself, it is not always a remarkably more enjoyable tactile feeling than having a scalp massage or eating an oyster.

Through sexual love, we are accepted for who we really are

Yet nevertheless, sex with our lover can be one of the nicest things we ever do. The reason is that sex delivers a major psychological thrill. The pleasure we experience has its origin in an idea: that of being allowed to do a very private thing to and with another person. Another person’s body is a highly protected and private zone. We’re implicitly saying to another person through our unclothing that they have been placed in a tiny, intensely policed category of people: that we have granted them an extraordinary privilege. Sexual excitement is psychological. It’s not so much what our bodies happen to be doing that turns us on. It’s what’s happening in our brains: acceptance is at the centre of the kinds of experiences we collectively refer to as ‘getting turned on.’ It feels physical – the blood pumps faster, the metabolism shifts gear, the skin gets hot – but behind all this lies a very different kind of change: a sense of an end to our isolation.

In general, civilisation requires us to present stringently edited versions of ourselves to others. It asks us to be cleaner, purer, more polite versions of who we might otherwise be. The demand comes at quite a high internal cost. Important sides of our character are pushed into the shadows. The person who loves us sexually does something properly redemptive: they stop making a distinction between the different sides of who we are. They can see that we are the same person all the time; that our gentleness or dignity in some situations isn’t fake because of how we are in bed and vice versa. Through sexual love, we have the chance to solve one of the deepest, loneliest problems of human nature: how to be accepted for who we really are.

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• Authors & Illustrators

Alain de Botton

Essays in love.

'De Botton is a national treasure.' - Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black A unique love story and a classic work of philosophy, rooted in the mysterious workings of the human heart and mind. Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved. A man and woman on a flight from Paris to London, and so begins their love story. From first kiss to first argument, infatuation to heartbreak, de Botton illuminates each stage of their relationship with a clarity both startling and tender. With the verve of a novelist and the insight of a philosopher, Essays in Love unveils the mysteries of the human heart. It is essential reading for anyone seeking instruction in the art of love.

The book's success has much to do with its beautifully modelled sentences, its wry humour and its unwavering deadpan respect for its reader's intelligence . . . full of keen observation and flashes of genuine lyricism, acuity and depth. Francine Prose, author of The Vixen and Lovers at the Chameleon Club

Witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights The Spectator

De Botton is a national treasure. Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black

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How To Think More About Sex

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Essays in Love

By: Alain de Botton

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• 4.4 out of 5 stars 4.4 (299 ratings)

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Publisher's summary

Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.

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This newer edition of the King James Bible published in 1769 is usually preferred by most that read it over the older 1611 version. This 1769 edition is highly sought after due to being more reader/listener friendly than the 1611 since many typos were fixed.... We hope your new audio bible will go everywhere with you and be a blessing for years to come.

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The doorbell rings, just days after my beloved husband’s sudden death. I don’t recognise the woman on our doorstep, with her blonde highlights, a diamond bracelet identical to my own and a bouncing baby boy in her arms. As I show her inside, I notice her eyes grow wide as she takes in our spacious hallway, and the big squashy sofas that we all used to pile on. She glances at the silver-framed family photos and my little daughter hiding behind my skirts. She looks at me, her blue eyes serious. ‘I’m sorry’ she says. ‘I am your husband’s girlfriend. And this is his son.'

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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.

Contrary to common reviews

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In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth. At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned. Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist.

Totally original-totally feasible!

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When the call came it seemed like the answer to my prayers. My career as a voice actor had been over for months and me and my little girl Scarlet were living back at my mum’s place. I felt like a failure professionally—and with Scarlet having problems at school, as a parent as well. So, when I was asked to narrate a new book by disappeared novelist Philippa Roberts I jumped at the chance, even if it meant leaving Scarlet with my ex, Hugo, for a few weeks. Hugo, with his perfect new home and his perfect new girlfriend Saskia. But this isn’t a dream come true. It’s a nightmare.

Love but it's a production issue!

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Emma and Ariella, neighbours in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs, appear to have it all—perfect homes, perfect husbands, perfect lives. But they both know dark secrets lurk beneath the surface and shallow waters can’t hide Ariella’s. Now she has been found murdered. Her daughter filmed the killing. Not knowing what she’s filmed, Emma’s daughter Kiki innocently uploads footage of Ariella’s brutal death. Emma fears the worst—the killer will know what she and Kiki have seen. Their safe suburban lives no longer exist.

Surprising and refreshing

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Renowned as much for her wit and satirical social commentary as for her stories of love and romance, Jane Austen remains unfailingly relevant and one of Britain’s best loved authors. In this Audible Original collection, an all-star list of narrators (Billie Piper, Claire Foy, Emma Thompson, Florence Pugh and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) capture Austen’s pin-sharp humour and tone in these dramatisations of her six beloved novels accompanied by a full cast.

Not a faithful rendition

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Grace Evans, an overworked New Yorker looking for a total escape from her busy life, books an Airbnb on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. When she arrives at the idyllic getaway, she’s pleased to find that the owner is a handsome man by the name of Calvin Wells—and he’s eager to introduce her to his easygoing way of life. But there are things Grace discovers that she’s not too pleased about: a lack of cell phone service. A missing woman. And a feeling that something isn’t right with the ranch.

Worst. Ever. NOT a true twist. Juvenile writing and story,

• By Whitney Lahann on 04-29-23

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False Advertising!

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Un día gris cualquiera, un hombre cualquiera y un vuelo de lo más aburrido entre París y Londres...y de repente, ese hombre levanta la vista y ve a Chloe, su vecina de asiento, una joven de ojos verde agua, hombros quebradizos y uñas mal cuidadas. Cuando el avión aterriza, él ya sabe que esa es la mujer de su vida. Es más: su amor es único y va a ser eterno. 

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This is a hopeful, consoling, gentle book about failure. Our societies talk a lot about success, but the reality is that no one gets through life without failing–in small and usually also in large ways. Sometimes our failures are very obvious, at other times, we feel we have to conceal them out of shame. This book encourages us to accept the role that failure plays for all of us and to feel compassion for ourselves for the messes we can’t help but make as we go through our lives.

The second part of the book was really good perceived failure.

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What listeners say about Essays in Love

• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.4 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 180
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.5 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 170
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.3 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 152

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

Thought provoking and well performed

I enjoyed this peek into the brain of a young man contemplating love and romance, and found it to be enlightening and relatable. The narrator keeps things moving along crisply, which is crucial since much of the book is comprised not of action but of musings. I look forward to listening to The Course of Love next.

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• Reem Alsmaiel

Enjoyable read

I enjoyed this book thoroughly. I liked how it captured the man’s point of view throughout the relationship journey. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding love in all its stages.

Brilliantly plucks and weaves love's nuances

What did you love best about Essays in Love?

The story is engaging. There are really good points made, great references, and de Botton analyzes the nuances of falling in and out of love with the perspective and depth of someone who's lived a thousand lives. The narrator's voice is very attractive.

What does James Wilby bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Great voice. Very warm and theatrical (not in an exaggerated way) at the same time.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. It was so hard to even go to sleep. I had my Audible on sleep timer several times but didn't want to miss anything to grogginess. So I would relisten the same parts the next day. This book is so wise.

Any additional comments?

Definitely listen to this.

3 people found this helpful

• Overall 4 out of 5 stars
• Performance 3 out of 5 stars
• Story 4 out of 5 stars

• Anonymous User

Good story, poor narration

The narrator is too dramatic which unfortunately ruins some moments. I enjoyed the story though.

• Colby L Mortensen

Unbearably profound in its complexity and depth. So attuned to the nuances of romances spells, and an amazing gift of disillusionment.

• Performance 4 out of 5 stars

• Maria L. Lantin

Every relationship you've ever analyzed

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I wouldn't recommend this book to all my friends but I know that some of them would enjoy it as much as I did. It's for romantics that think too much sometimes. It's for realists that love to fall in love nevertheless.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Essays in Love?

There are many memorable moments...but perhaps what stands out now after a couple weeks is the way intimacy in the couple is revealed and lost. The fight scenes are funny in a "oh yeah, I've been there" kinda way.

Have you listened to any of James Wilby’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

It was my first James Wilby book and I enjoyed his reading very much.

Who was the most memorable character of Essays in Love and why?

I guess it was the main male character because he's so introspective to the point of absurdity but also insightful.

5 people found this helpful

• Andre Mendes

One day binge

Simply could not put this book down. There are so few stories, love stories fewer still, that capture real life so well. The book itself is a beautiful mix of philosophical topics with narrative that makes for such an enlightening and enjoyable listening experience. Very well performed, I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a realistic love story.

2 people found this helpful

• Story 3 out of 5 stars

So close but not quite

I really like Alain de Botton, and really wanted to love this book but unfortunately the narrative pales in comparison to his philosophical digressions. Having said that, it did make me see my past relationships in a new light. The narrator was very good, although his female voice could be better.

Bewildering!

The narrator's voice was sublime, as always. The story in itself was mundane, much unlike the author's take on love and his stunning talent in analyzing every psychological aspect of its every stages.

I love this story.

I like the life nugget sprinkled through out this love story. It’s so real. Need to listen to it again.

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The Course of Love by Alain de Botton review – affairs, childcare and Ikea glassware

L ate in Alain de Botton’s engaging novel, a married couple, Rabih and Kirsten, find that the demands and stresses of ordinary life – work, domestic chores, financial worries, the harrowing expenditure of energy required to raise their two adored children – have made them irritable and contentious. In part, the narrator concludes, they are at odds “because they have so seldom seen their struggles sympathetically reflected in the art they know … Were Rabih and Kirsten able to read about themselves as characters in a novel, they might ... experience a brief but helpful burst of pity at their not at all unworthy plight, and thereby perhaps learn to dissolve some of the tension that arises on those evenings when, once the children are in bed, the apparently demoralising and yet in truth deeply grand and significant topic of ironing comes up.”

Presumably, the novel that Rabih and Kirsten need to read is the one De Botton has written: a sympathetic account of the relationship that begins only after the besotted courtship has ended. Having fallen deeply in love, the couple “will marry, 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, there will be passages of boredom, they’ll sometimes want to murder one another and on a few occasions to kill themselves. This will be the real love story.”

Rabih and Kirsten are well-drawn, individualised characters, with distinct and separate backgrounds (he’s half-Lebanese, half-German; she’s Scottish), careers (he’s an architect working in an urban design studio; she’s a surveyor employed by Edinburgh City Council) and personalities (she’s confident and feisty; he’s dreamy and insecure). But what’s interesting is De Botton’s decision to make their experience so thoroughly ordinary that their lives seem emblematic, their stories interchangeable with those of countless couples. Work brings them together; they decide to share their lives; they squabble over room temperature and punctuality, which glasses to buy from Ikea and the tediousness of Kirsten’s friends. Rabih sleeps with an American woman he meets on a business trip, the marriage falters, he and Kirsten go into couples therapy …

It should be clear by now that what propels us through the novel is not plot, but character, and De Botton’s meticulous examination of the emotions and behaviours that draw the couple together and nearly drive them apart. He is acutely perceptive about the rapidity with which our moods can change radically over the course of a weekend; about the ease with which familiarity can blunt the edge of passion; about the ways in which our friends’ good fortune can make us question our own hard-won contentment; about our reluctance to reveal the most secret aspects of our psyches; and about the complex predilections that determine the choices we make. Attracted to Kirsten, Rabih “identifies her as a suitable candidate for marriage because he is instinctively suspicious of people for whom things have always gone well. Around cheerful and sociable others he feels isolated and peculiar. He dislikes carefree types with a vengeance.” There’s a refreshing honesty in what De Botton has to say about the longueurs of childcare: “Neither Kirsten nor Rabih have ever known such a mixture of love and boredom. They are used to basing their friendships on shared temperaments and interests. But [their daughter] Esther is, confusingly, the most boring person they have ever met and the one they find themselves loving the most.”

Scattered throughout the narrative are italicised passages of essayistic contemplation on the nature of love, abstract reflections commenting on each new development, without mentioning the characters by name. These musings are clever, their tone a mixture of irony and sincerity. But they can border on sententiousness, as in this passage about the consequences of adultery: “Never having been betrayed sets up poor preconditions for remaining faithful. Evolving into genuinely more loyal people requires us to suffer through some properly innoculative episodes, in which we feel for a time limitlessly panicked, violated and on the edge of collapse. Only then can the injunction not to betray our spouses evolve from a bland bromide into a permanently vivid moral imperative.”

If we eventually find ourselves skimming such sections, it’s less a critique of De Botton’s novel than a testament to his ability to so involve us in the fates of his endearing couple that we resent any interruptions, and hurry along to learn more about the love story that likely mirrors our own and that of so many others we know.

• Alain de Botton

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Essays in Love Paperback – January 1, 2012

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Language English
• Publisher Pan MacMillan
• Publication date January 1, 2012
• Dimensions 4.96 x 0.59 x 7.72 inches
• ISBN-10 1447235223
• ISBN-13 978-1447235224
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pan MacMillan (January 1, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1447235223
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1447235224
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.96 x 0.59 x 7.72 inches
• #7,754 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

About the author

Alain de botton.

Alain de Botton is the author of Essays in Love (1993), The Romantic Movement (1994), Kiss and Tell (1995), How Proust can Change your Life (1997), The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) The Art of Travel (2002), Status Anxiety (2004) and most recently, The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

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Essays in Love: Reviews

James Friel in Time Out, 27 October 1993

A well-heeled young couple meet on a plane and instantly fall for each other. They make love on the first date and, over a space of time, their relationship thrives, falters and finishes almost as abruptly as it began. It’s a familiar tale but there is nothing predictable about De Botton’s explanation of how love enthrals us all. This is no light romance but a sort of ‘When Harry Met Sally Meets Roland Barthes’.

Cast in the form of a series of academic essays, the novel analyses each stage of the affair and considers just what is this thing called love. De Botton calculates the probability of falling love at first sight on a British Airways flight (one chance in 5840.82). He draws diagrams to illustrate why there are those of us who can love only those who do not love us back and tells us why a lover’s gaze is like a kebab. Erudite and light-hearted, he brings in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Heraclitus and Hegel, the French Revolution, a Chinese meal and a pair of shoes to demonstrate the problem that our need to love precedes our love for anyone in particular.

Plot is negligible, characterisation minimal, but the freshness and clarity of De Botton’s style enlivens what might sound worthy or merely clever. This is a novel of wit and insight; whatever the state of your love life, it will make entertaining and sometimes painful, sometimes profitable reading.

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