Oh, this was BEAUTIFUL!!! I couldn't and didn't want to put it down. The prose is breathtaking and it was a delight to read, so I'm ending my 2024 reading year on a high note. This book includes 3 novellas, though I'd say it's more like 2 novellas and a short story. The two novellas were my absolute favorites, The Gentleman from Peru and Room on the Sea.

The Gentleman from Peru is about a man who can perceive alternate versions of people's lives, the ones that sprout with every choice we make. He meets a group of young Americans traveling together and the story starts with him as a mentor, sharing his knowledge, but then he starts spending more time with one of the women in the group. The story changes from that point, and the reveal is so beautiful.

I loved the idea of soulmates continuing to exist after they're gone and the inevitability of us finding them again in our alternate versions, even if it takes hundreds of years for us to coincide and meet each other again at the right time.

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Room on the Sea is about a man and a woman in their 60s/70s who meet during jury duty and they connect for a week. We see how their connection builds and how the love that grows between them awakens something in them that they thought was long gone. This story is also about soulmatism, but in a different context.

They're both married, which may be an issue for some people, but I didn't mind it. The way the story unfolds, you can't be angry about two people finding genuine love. It would be different if it was just lust and it was ill-intentioned, but this just didn't feel that way. It kind of reminded me of that old movie, Brief Encounter, which I love.

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Lastly, there's Mariana, a short story that's basically this woman writing a long letter to the man who broke her heart. I think it drags a little, but it explores very well what it feels like to fall deeply in love with someone who was only infatuated with you and what it's like when their infatuation stops, but the love you feel for them continues, no matter what you do to try to get over it.

Overall, a nearly perfect collection of novellas and I will definitely get a physical copy of it when I can.

Andre Acimán writes about obsessive love like no other. The Gentleman from Peru will be in my mind for a long time, the use of magical realism is so beautiful and the whole story is very captivating. Mariana’s letter is so beautifully written and will resonate with fans of CMBYN.

I don't know what it is about André Aciman, but he softens the cold-hearted cynic in me. It doesn’t matter how sentimental his (typically romantic) stories are, they never feel to saccharine or cringeworthy and I always get swept up in them by the end.

Room on the Sea is a collection of three novellas which were originally published as Audible exclusives and now get to be read on the page, which is probably the best way to experience Aciman’s writing, in my opinion. While they’re all romances, the similarities between the stories pretty much stop there. Aciman uses each of these romantic tales to tell wildly different love stories.

“The Gentleman from Peru,” the story of star-crossed lovers, is classic Aciman. Sweeping, poetic, and tragic. “Mariana” is the most stylish story, almost taking the form of a monologue about unrequited love. And “Room on the Sea,” by far my favorite in the collection, is a very subtle, realist story about a late-in-life spark between two people who meet at jury duty.

Aciman’s writing is, as usual, strong throughout, and I had a great time reading a collection that felt both thematically tight and yet narratively diverse.

”He was reading the newspaper. She was reading a novel. He looked at her once. She did not look back.”

Wow. This book was like a punch to the gut. André Aciman writes like he’s peering into the French windows of a real, raw love and passing it off like fiction. It’s rare that you read a novella, especially a romantic one, and come away from it feeling satisfied, but each novella in Room on the Sea reads whole and longer than they actually are.

Now I understand why Aciman’s books translate so beautifully to film; it’s almost like he treats his work like a screenplay, committing to detail and doing away with conventional dialogue, and launching his characters into winding monologues or none at all.

The Gentleman from Peru was my favorite. Reading it I could feel the sand between my toes, the salt drying on my skin. Phenomenal.