I Love You Too Much

November 1, 2017
British-born Drake makes her fiction debut with a novel narrated by an adolescent Parisian boy losing whatever innocence (not much) his childhood has allowed him.To Paul, Paris' wealthy sixth arrondisement near the Jardin du Luxumbourg is neither charming nor picturesque but "gray" and lonely. His high-achieving parents, Severine and Philippe, moved to the bourgeois neighborhood only to be near a posh elementary school that ended up rejecting Paul. Overweight and poor at math, aware that he's always disappointed his parents, Paul finds himself on the cusp of adolescence and deeply unhappy. Having divorced a couple of years ago when Paul was 11, Severine has just given birth to baby Lou with her rock-and-roll boyfriend, Gabriel, while Philippe lives in a St. Germaine bachelor pad and cares primarily about working out and his new Porsche. The only adult who pays attention to Paul is the maid, Cindy, who provides the comfort food he craves. Paul begins an unlikely friendship with a new girl in his class, bonding over their shared sense of being failures in their parents' eyes. Scarlett is as unhappy as Paul and definitely as complex; strutting sexy rebel vibes but devoted to her dog and entranced by Lou, Scarlett previously attended a strict Catholic school until she was expelled. While their relationship remains platonic even after Scarlett and her boyfriend break up, Paul is thoroughly besotted. At the same time he keeps his eye on the machinations of the adults around him. He watches his snobby paternal grandparents make clear that Philippe can never measure up to his older, even more successful brother. He watches irresponsible Gabriel live off Severine and Severine's desperate struggle against getting old. But then he inadvertently witnesses several deeply disturbing acts that will not surprise the reader but for which Paul is emotionally unprepared and which leave him feeling betrayed and more isolated than ever.Drake overplays the mood of sexual menace but is masterful at showing her characters' sorrows percolate up even through the novel's most cynical moments.

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November 27, 2017
Drake’s memorable, heartfelt debut captures the intensity and angst of a teenaged boy’s coming of age in Paris, where the façade of perfection and beauty often hides decay and degradation. Paul divides his time between two narcissistic parents who split when he was 11. His mother, obsessed with keeping her good looks, has just given birth to a baby girl whose father, the freeloading Gabriel, is a guitar player in some nominal band. Paul’s workaholic father, an exercise devotee, is busy training for a triathlon. No one except Cindy, his mother’s maid, has time for Paul. During one of his mother’s countless spa visits, Paul chances upon a girl from his high school whose parents are also at the spa, and a tentative relationship begins. Scarlett, a feisty “bad girl” who lives for adventure, flaunts her budding sexuality and brings Paul out of his shell. Their liaison grows into something more meaningful. But then Paul witnesses two disturbing scenes—one at his father’s, another at his mother’s—that upend his life. How he survives his loss of innocence is both poignant and uplifting.

November 1, 2017
Living near Paris' storied Jardin de Luxembourg, 13-year-old Paul finds solace in food and little else, especially after the birth of baby Lou, Paul's mom's daughter with her freeloading rock star boyfriend, whom Paul detests. In a different luxury apartment overlooking another beautiful park, Paul's father is obsessed with exercising and Paul's inability to live up to his family's standards of academic excellence. Scarlett, an alluring new student at Paul's school, awakens feelings of rebelliousness and a new emotional awareness in him. After Paul secretly witnesses his father having curiously violent sex with another man, he's nearly inconsolable, and, whether or not he realizes it, his quest to understand the mysteries of love and adulthood becomes a life-or-death matter. In her compelling fiction debut, Drake, a formerly longtime Paris resident who wrote about the city's fashion scene in The Beautiful Fall (2006), crafts Paul's hometown with a true insider's care, and she believably narrates as a boy resisting the confining forces of his self-involved parents' narrow paths and stingily shared love for him.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)