Returning home from an ordinary day at the office, Virgil finds a rather disturbing message on his answerering machine : Clara informs him that she is leaving him. Virgil is used to women leaving him, for him it is even « more a certainty than gravity », but he jas no recollection of this so-called Clara. He panics, wonders if he’s seriously ill or amnesiac, runs to his shrink, thinks again about one of those « reality accidents » that are always happening to him and asks his good friend Armelle, a fortune-teller in real life, for advice. Failling to get a satisfactory answer, he ends up making an unexpected decision : to win back this woman he doesn’t know…
Perhaps a Love Affair is a romantic comedy whose charm rests entirely on the character of Virgil, an off-killer, scatterbrained hero, an elegant and comical lover, a model employee but a closet rebel. He resembles the character Antoine in How I became stupid, altough he is perhaps ten years older. Martin Page channels Boris Vian in his witty, poetic writing with a hint of Brit humor. The stories he tells, miles away from the stuff of ordinary life, are fables transporting us into reverie, humor, and constant twists and turns.

Publishing house : éditions de l’Olivier, 2008.

Translation rights : Russia (Ast/Astrel), Italy (Garzanti), Brazil (Rocco), Greece (Patakis), Korea (Yolimwon), Romania (Humanitas), Germany (Thiele), Serbia (Nolit), Vicking/Penguin (USA).

Paperback rights : Points Seuil.

(the book cover is from the Penguin edition)