SPECIAL DELIVERY. A Correspondency published by Jean-Luc Foreur. Translated from the Danish by G. Forester.. This item is unavailable.SPECIAL DELIVERY. A Correspondency published by Jean-Luc Foreur. Translated from the Danish by G. Forester.

In Copenhagen a young woman, Delphine, falls in love with an untitled painting she has seen in a gallery, by the French painter Jean-Luc Foreur. She cannot help writing him a fan letter, to which he replies briefly. This is the beginning of a correspondence that develops over the next eighteen months. Soon the letters grow more intimate and Delphine begins to bare her soul layer by layer. As the man reveals himself mysteriously through his letters, her dependence grows, and her feelings for him turn into a grand passion. She has become concentrated body and soul with longing for the lover she has never seen. Eventually a meeting can no longer be postponed.

Impressively translated from the Danish by G. Forester, Special Delivery: A Correspondence published by Jean-Luc Foreur is Iselin C. Hermann's first novel, told through the letters exchanged between a young Danish woman, Delphine Hav, and a French painter, Jean-Luc Foreur. The correspondence begins with Delphine's enraptured response to one of Foreur's paintings: "Somewhere under my skin, where the flesh turns to fluid, I see your picture Sans titre 2.22 x 2, hanging in the Gallerie Y in Paris. I may not own it, but the picture is mine." Not written with any expectation of a reply, Delphine's note generates a poignant and erotic, exchange of words and desire: the desire to love and to know one another that, through 18 months, compels Delphine and Jean-Luc towards an elusive meeting. Hermann's treatment of her theme is deft and intimate, with a keen eye on the differences between the two writers.

Older, and married, Jean-Luc never dates his letters. For some reason, he writes fewer of them: "You're not to expect letters from me the moment you've posted one of yours, dear girl ... Taking something for granted is the most dangerous thing of all and you have to learn not to expect but to wait"; Delphine writes, sometimes into silence, because she feels "ready to burst" with longing. As the desire to meet one another, to make words flesh, comes to the fore, Hermann's story is driven towards the tantalising, and unexpected, conclusion to the longing it has evoked so effectively. --Vicky Lebeau