An Unfulfilled Desire

What if desire were hiding an absence?

The story

After the sudden death of his wife, Marine, Maxime finds that he can no longer bear the silence.

Head of a home-care services company, attractive, cultured and deeply sensual, he moves from one woman to the next without understanding what he is truly looking for in them.

Then there is Sophie. Cold, elegant, captivating. A woman who believes she can tame what Maxime calls “The Beast”.

And finally Sandrine. A wounded, sensual, radiant woman in whom Maxime believes he has found again the romantic and sexual certainty he once shared with Marine.

Torn between desire, domination, emotional dependency and a desperate need to be loved, Maxime slowly sinks into a mechanism he can no longer control. But when the two women finally understand what he has been running from for years, everything falls apart.

“AN UNFULFILLED DESIRE” is a haunting psychological novel about longing, the body, the power of desire… and the overwhelming fear of being left alone with oneself.

After Marine’s sudden death, Maxime believes he can go on living by chasing one encounter after another. But the bonds he forms with Sophie, and then with Sandrine, slowly lead him towards a truth he refused to face. Life’s great transformations are almost never sudden. They take shape slowly, until the day we look back and discover that everything has changed.

Maxime

Attractive, cultured, deeply sensual. Since Marine’s death, he has moved from one woman to the next without knowing what he is looking for. What he is really running from: silence.

Sophie

Cold, elegant, captivating. She believes she can tame what Maxime calls “The Beast”. With her, desire becomes a power game.

Sandrine

Wounded, sensual, radiant. With her, Maxime believes he has found again the romantic and sexual certainty he once shared with Marine. Until the day everything falls apart.

CHARLES BALLERY

Contemporary novels