Lovers or Something Like It is a case study in love -- or something like that. In two parts and very short chapters (58,
over less than 150 pages), Zeller relates and examines the relationship between a successful young solicitor, Tristan, and primary-school-teacher Amélie.
Amélie confounds that -- not because he loves her (or doesn''t he ?), but because of the pull and hold she exerts.
Zeller doesn''t shy away even from passages like: She tells herself that life is beautiful, not in opposition to its ugliness, but beyond, for it is constructed like a novel, with a hidden
meaning: it is not enough to turn the pages, but to allow yourself to be convinced by the
mechanism of the words, the insistent mechanism that repeats itself, and repeats itself insidiously to gain access to the hidden meaning.
It''s an attempt to grasp love and relationships in modern times, a world where: Love would have been the way out, but that was an old idea, incompatible with the current way the world works.