The novel ends with full-throated romantic certainty, even in death: “And yet on this boat, adrift on an ocean at night, the sovereign truth of life broke through: the certainty that the passing of a man who loved does not signify the death of the love he carried within him.”

Readers will doubtless be divided over how grudgingly English and Larkin-esque they feel in response. Most of us will only admit to wanting to find “Our almost-instinct almost true/ What will survive of us is love.”

Makine’s 10th novel retains all the freshness and intensity of first love; yet readers may feel that in the construction of this often brilliant novel the usual balance between complexity and simplicity is ultimately skewed. Unless, of course, you too believe that love is “in fact, so simple”.