Hotel des Ameriques

About this book

Hotel des Ameriques: Hélène, a distracted anesthetist, almost runs down Gilles one evening on a Biarritz street. She is still numb from the drowning death earlier that year of her lover, a visionary architect. Gilles presses for a relationship, then backs away, deciding she could never love someone of lower class and limited prospects. But she does fall in love with him and gradually her depression eases. As she heals, he becomes obsessed with her lover's talents and his own limitations, behaving bizarrely and pushing her away. J'embrasse pas: A young man leaves his small town in southern France to discover Paris. Being inexperienced and naive, he must give up his dream of becoming an actor and prostitutes himself to men for money and survival. Throughout all these encounters, he keeps his innocence but becomes very emotionally detached.