Priority

Acclaimed as "a sensuous literary treat" by the Santa Fe New Mexican, Priority is a lovely and nuanced exploration of intellectual admiration that develops into consuming passion. It begins as a young woman, Delphine, writes a letter to Jean-Luc, a painter whose work has touched her. She is sure he will not read it—but he does, and he answers. Over the next eighteen months, Delphine's letters bare her soul layer by layer, making her ever more vulnerable to his teasing replies and long silences. Helplessly, Delphine finds herself falling in love with a man she knows only through what he reveals in his letters. Her fascination with him begins to overwhelm her, until she begins to long for a lover she has never seen. Finally, it seems, a meeting may no longer be postponed. "A gem of an epistolary novel, a tiny thriller ... Hermann reveals a startling capacity of human beings for self-invention." — Joan Mellen, The Baltimore Sun