Late Leven

In this exquisite sequel to "The Little Souls," Couperus turns his unflinching gaze to two people trapped in a marriage that has become a comfortable prison. Henri van der Welcke and his wife Constance have endured years of emotional distance, until suddenly, impossibly, life demands more of them. Henri falls for his young niece Marianne, while Constance, at forty-two, discovers that her heart has not yet finished beating, it reaches instead for Brauws, an old friend from her husband's past. What begins as scandalous possibility becomes something more profound: a woman's awakening to her own existence, the terrible realization that she has been asleep for decades. Around them swirls The Hague's upper crust, all petty intrigues and meaningless social performance, the "little souls" of the title going through their motions while these two figures stand on the edge of something genuine and dangerous. Couperus writes with devastating precision about the particular cruelty of wanting something you cannot have, and the strange grace of wanting anyway.