The trial of true love : a novel /

Thirty-year-old confirmed bachelor Dearborn (known to all as Bron) is fascinated by the work of symbolist painter Paul Marotte. Soon after the London writer decides to make the artist the focal point of a book about love at first sight, he meets his friend's beautiful and mysterious cousin, Flora, and is instantly smitten. Under the guise of research, he follows Flora to Amsterdam and finds himself in the company of a distinguished art collector, whose relationship with the young woman is enigmatic at best. Bron finds eerie parallels between Paul Marotte's life and his own, as he contemplates the connections among art, literature, and love. An acclaimed British playwright ( Shadowlands) and novelist ( The Society of Others), Nicholson serves up a compelling story line and a cast of intriguing characters. (Bron's ex-girlfriend, Anna, has the novel's most piquant lines, although Flora, as the object of desire, could have been fleshed out a bit more.) Clever plot twists seal the deal in this thought-provoking tale about lives transformed in the blink of an eye. --Allison Block Copyright 2006 Booklist

Screenwriter, playwright and novelist Nicholson (Shadowlands; Gladiator; The Society of Others) offers up talky, philosophical characters in "a story about falling in love" set in 1977, the year the narrator Bron turns 30. When his friend (and ex-girlfriend) Anna kicks him out of their shared London flat, Bron retreats to the countryside home of his friend Bernard. He plans to write a book about true love, focusing on the case history of French postimpressionist painter Paul Marotte, who was smitten during a chance meeting with the woman who became his lover and muse. Bron-who has always been commitment-shy-finds his life echoing the painter's when he meets and instantly falls for Bernard's cousin, the beautiful, mysterious Flora. When he tells her of his feelings, she flees-setting Bron on a journey to Amsterdam, where he meets the eccentric art dealer Freddy Christiansen, who owns some of Marotte's letters and paintings and also knows Flora. Bron's continual musings on true love grow trite and repetitive, and the outcome of his romantic quest is less of a surprise than what he learns about Marotte. Still, Nicholson pulls off an ending that resounds with the echoes of romance that his narrator has been pondering. (Mar. 21) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

"Is true love possible between men and women?" asks the protagonist of this earnest second full-length fiction from the British screenwriter (Shadowlands, Gladiator) and novelist (The Society of Others, 2005). The questioner is John "Bron" Dearborn, a writer of sorts who's dismissed by his London flatmate (and former lover) Anna, just as he's been commissioned to compose a book about the phenomenon of love at first sight. While staying with a friend in Devon, Bron experiences an epiphanic rapture upon sighting distractingly beautiful Flora Freeman (his fellow house guest)--a moment Bron instantly likens to the similar experience undergone by his book's central subject: the fictional French Post-Impressionist Paul Marotte. Helplessly smitten, Bron courts the mercurial Flora (the itinerant wife of a rich older husband, who's either endlessly indulgent or utterly indifferent to her). But she keeps sending mixed signals, first responding to Bron's ardor, then quickly retreating from him. Help is offered by E.F. "Freddy" Christiansen, an independently wealthy Marotte scholar-collector--and Flora's old friend--who also aids Bron's researches, and arranges a rendezvous at his home in Switzerland, where Bron learns bitter lessons about the elusiveness of love and the difficulty of authenticating what our deepest instincts tell us must be real. The novel begins sluggishly, and marches somewhat stolidly in place, until Freddy's Machiavellian posturing adds some much-needed malicious humor. Nicholson deftly layers in allusions to famous lovers (e.g., Bacall and Bogart, Victorian adventurer Richard Burton and his Isabell) who fit Bron's thesis, and builds a beguiling house of cards surrounding the indistinct figures of Marotte and his beloved subject, English governess Kate Summer. But it's all a setup, and neither the novel's unsurprising payoff nor its annoyingly phony happy ending justify the redundant oversimplifications that lead up to them. Moderately engaging, here and there. But there's no real passion in it, and the end result is tepid. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.