I Love You Too Much

I knew I was in Paris, I knew that was the Seine beneath me, the sky above, but when I looked around for help, the grand apartment buildings of the Quai Voltaire stared back at me, indifferent.

Alicia Drake, author of the critically acclaimed biography The Beautiful Fall, evokes contemporary life in the City of Lights lavishness of Edward St. Aubyn and the sophistication of Julia Pierpont's Among Ten Thousand Things. I Love You Too Much is a novel of extraordinary intelligence and heart, a devastating coming of age story told from the sidelines of Parisian perfection.

In the sixth arrondissement everything is perfect and everyone is lonely. This is the Paris of thirteen-year-old Paul. Shy and unloved, he quietly observes the lives of the self-involved grown-ups around him: his glamorous Maman, S verine, her younger musician lover, Gabriel, and his fitness-obsessed Papa, Philippe. Always overlooked, it's only a matter of time before Paul witnesses something that he's not supposed to see...

Seeking solace in an unlikely friendship with rebellious classmate Scarlett and succumbing to the temptation of the numerous patisseries in his elegant neighborhood, Paul searches for unconditional love. But what will he do if he can't find it?

Alicia Drake writes regularly for publications including International Herald Tribune, British Vogue, Travel + Leisure, and W Magazine, for which she was a contributing editor.

Brought up in Liverpool, Drake was educated at Cambridge University. She went to Paris for six months and stayed for eighteen years. She is the author of The Beautiful Fall, a book of narrative nonfiction about Paris fashion and creativity in the 1970s. She returned to the UK recently and now lives in the countryside with her husband and five children. I Love You Too Much is her first novel.