Rights sold to: China (Jilin Publishing House), Germany (Aufbau), Italy (Mondadori), Spain (Randomhouse Mondadori), Romania (Trei), and Vietnam (Bach Viet).
Claire has very vague memories of her first experiences with boys. There is only one boy whom her mind and her body remember clearly. That was the year she was sixteen and she confided everything to her diary, down to the last detail: how he touched her, how he looked at her. It was exciting because the relationship was a secret one, but also because they never went all the way: it remained an unfinished story.
Years later, a wife and a mother, and a woman who has explored many sides of her sexuality, she still thinks about him. D. inhabits her memory as a mythical character, as her favorite fantasy, the remedy to dull days. She keeps an eye on him, checks the phone book to make sure he is still alive and not too far from her. She lives a secret double life, and starts her diary again, to escape daily routine and the effect of time passing.
One day, she finds herself face to face with D. There is no choice: she has to live this story for real.
L'amant inachevé shows in a melancholical way what adolescence is about, including the state of exaltation that is peculiar to this age. Yet Gaëlle Guernalec-Levy also tells us about passionate obsession, desire and sex with an obviousness and a cheerful softness which turn this story into a delightful parenthesis.
Gaëlle Guernalec-Levy is thirty-three years old. She has worked as a journalist for ten years. L’amant inachevé is her first novel. In 2007 she published Je ne suis pas enceinte (Stock), a study on pregnant women who deny their condition.
Des années plus tard, mariée, mère, installée, ayant exploré maintes facettes de la sexualité, elle pense toujours à lui. Avec le temps, D. est devenu un souvenir mythique, son fantasme préféré, son refuge quand le quotidien est trop gris. Elle le surveille de loin, s’assure, via l’annuaire, qu’il est toujours vivant, qu’il ne vit pas trop loin d’elle. Elle mène une double vie dans sa tête, elle reprend la rédaction de ses cahiers de lycéenne, elle s’évade pour ne plus se sentir vieillir.
Le jour où Claire se retrouve par hasard face à D., elle n’a plus le choix. C’est dans la vraie vie qu’elle va devoir aller au bout de cette histoire.