Book Review: The Day That I Met You by Lena Manta

Author: Lena Manta
Publisher: Psihogios Publishing House
Release Date: 2001
Pages: 378
Language: Greek
Add to Goodreads

Rating: 3 stars

When did she stop being happy? She didn't remember anymore
When did she begun being unhappy? Was she?

She was 35 years old. She was married. She was a mother. She was beautiful. She was rich. Ingredients for happiness and success. He was 40 years old. Good looking. Faithful husband. Rensponsible father. He never forgot any anniversaries or birthdays. Maybe because of his well organised agenda and secretary. Organised and careful. The key to their succesful life. 

Can laughter and routine become a reason to divorce? And what will happen laughter comes back to her lips...from the window of the neighbor next door? What will happen when she will have to choose between the life she knows today, the recklessnes, the need not to know what will happen tomorrow and the life she has scheduled up next years vacations? And moreover between a crazy love, filled with challenges, in addition to an old one that has nothing to offer to her anymore?

My Thoughts:

It's been sometime since I read a book in my native language- Greek. I forgot the beauty of the words and the sentences and how different it can actually feel to read a book that you can fully understand.

This book tells the story of a 35 year old housewife in the bring of breakdown. She is a wreck emotionally and she wants out. She wants something different because she is tired with the routine and the chores and her life that lacks romance and walks under the stars. In other words, she wants what every married woman wants after 10 or more years of marriage- a change.

Her husband is simple and a man of few words. He plays an important role in the book as to how his wife will choose the company of the neighbor next door. Although, he doesnt say much in the book he changes a lot while the book progresses and he becomes more understandable.

Although, the neighbor that will have an affair with the housewife plays an important role in the book we dont know anything about him except the fact that he loves her and that he can make an amazing Greek coffee.

You will want to know their names but they dont have one. Throughout the book you won't read their names once, it doesn't matter, this is a story that needs to be told and people need to understand that routine can be destructive for any marriage or friendship.

The emotions were vivid at some points of the book and flat at other but the words that the author used were simply beautiful. The story progresses fast enough for the reader to feel anything other than confusion...thats what the wife feels in most of the book. Confusion and lack of interest in anything.

Its a story about forgiveness, the power of love, understanding and the fact that birds and butterflies wont last forever once reality and every day life kick in.