The Naïve and Sentimental Lover

Name: The Naïve and Sentimental Lover
Rating: 3.6 (457 reviews)

by John le Carré

First published 1971

Amazon

3.5(457)

Successful businessman Aldo Cassidy meets the bohemian writer Shamus and his wife Helen, whose unconventional life unsettles his orderly assumptions about marriage, work and desire. Fascinated by them, he abandons the security of his established identity.

The resulting triangle moves between comic social observation and psychological disintegration. The novel examines the wish to escape middle-class responsibility and the damage caused when self-reinvention becomes an excuse for using other people.