Die-hard romantics will find it hard to resist John Burnham Schwartz's novel
Claire Marvel. Reminiscent of Erich Segal's
Love Story, this is the tale of a great yet tragic love, one foretold in the novel's first sentence: "There was before her and now there is after her, and that is the difference in my life." Boy (Julian Rose) meets beautiful girl (Claire Marvel) in a spring shower in 1985 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they attend Harvard as graduate students. They fall in love and spend a difficult yet idyllic time in the French countryside, but she is stolen away by Julian's treacherously suave advisor. Julian flees Boston for his hometown of New York City, where he starts a new life. He and Claire encounter each other again years later, and eventually Claire comes back to Julian, but only indirectly, again in France.
--Susan Biskeborn
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