Paul was reading a newspaper. Catherine was reading a novel. So begins Room on the Sea, Andre Aciman's scorching and elegiac love-story about a middle-aged man and woman who meet in the bullpen of jury selection and spend a sultry summer's week trespassing ever further into each other's hearts.
What begins as a flirtation quickly evolves into something deeper, something Paul and Catherine must carry on in secret - and with the understanding that anything more than a casual crush is out of the question. But as the week draws to a close, the end of their rendezvous comes into focus, and Paul and Catherine are forced to decide whether to act on their feelings or leave the fantasy of what could have been to the annals of the past.
By turns scintillating and philosophical, Room on the Sea is a compulsively listenable story of love, fate, and last chances.