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When a first novel is as rich and finely-tuned as this one, it is a cause for real celebration. Delabroy-Allard offers a story of love played out on a stage whose narrow boundaries of time and space serve to intensify the passion that animates her characters. The narrator (who remains nameless throughout the text) is a twenty-something teacher in a Parisian lycée. Her companion, the father of her young daughter, has recently left her, for reasons she cannot grasp. As she tries to see her way forward from that calamity, she realizes that she is navigating a period of latency. At a New Year's dinner, she meets Sarah, a woman some ten years older than herself and a professional violinist. Sarah smokes; she...