Love, If That’s What It Is

For fans of Marriage Story and Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment

Terri runs off with a lover, abandoning her children and her marriage of twenty-five years. Her husband, David, is left to take care of their two daughters, one of whom is falling in love for the first time. These four people start to question their identity outside the nuclear family. What remains of a disintegrated home, and what changes? Marijke Schermer’s Love, If That’s What It Is gives a kaleidoscopic view of a divorce, permitting the reader to enter the heads of not only the spouses, but also of the two daughters and the divorcees’ new lovers. Through several characters, the reader is presented with just as many views on relationships, while Schermer remains impartial and thus confronts readers with their own - perhaps shaky - romantic principles. What is love? With fresh flair and provocative perspectives, Schermer manages to provide an original and versatile answer.

‘Dutch playwright Schermer explores themes of romantic ennui and individuality in her scintillating debut, a yearlong account of a deteriorating marriage.(…) The author expertly humanises each of the characters’ desires and flaws as she illuminates the raw, inner workings of a broken marriage. This is as cathartic as it is gut-churning.‘ - Publishers Weekly