Book Synopsis:
London, 2035: Dr Katie Kuznetsov is a tech-savvy, fresh graduate who’s wrestling with Multiple Sclerosis and is starting her climb up the academic ladder. While watching her parents’ marriage fall apart, she’s battling the old-fashion ideas of her analog-loving fiancée Mark. Katie attempts to spice up her relationship with social media dating. She meets mysterious businessman Aron, and leaves Mark for the promise of a perfect relationship. At first Aron seems like an ideal boyfriend, but his constant disappearances and lack of communication make Katie doubt her sense of self. When Katie discovers his secret, her life splinters into micro-aggressions and lies. In addition, she battles a relapse of Multiple Sclerosis, her parents’ untimely divorce, and the breakdown of her relationship with old friends. Can Katie restore her faith in the integrity of people she meets online and off? Will she be able to piece her life back together and repair her belief in the wholeness of love?
The Love Fragments is available in paperback & ebook now. You can purchase your copy using the links below.
Quotes From The Book:
I used to be a dragon of three heads
A brother, a husband, a father
Time has cut them off
I lost my brother, my wife, my daughter
I used to believe in eternal youth
An easy life for me, for us, for you
Time has revealed the truth
We grow when pain strikes through
I used to think I could lie
My words, thoughts, actions hiding what is true
Time taught me to be me, myself and I
Integrated in what I think, say and do.
**
You know, things of the heart, they are uniquely human. But fate plays a part too! I think that once two people fall in love, there is no one, no other human being, who can stop them from acting on the longing they feel for each other.
**
I wished Mark hadn’t known me in the past. I wished we could start with some general, universal dating patterns that bring surprise. A painstakingly slow update of what no longer was valid and
what I no longer preferred pushed me backwards, reminding me of my rotten past I wanted to keep firmly shut.
**
It made me think that love is like a magnet. With three rotating magnets we can create electricity and sometimes couples need the third magnet to generate new energy. Sometimes it’s a new child,
sometimes a new job, a new illness, sometimes a new partner.
**
Dear Aron, in writing to you, my memories and dreams come together, they are sheltered, they are understood, they are at home. I used to write my thoughts into various notebooks and on scraps of paper, but now I have them all in one place, for no one but you and me to see. It makes me vulnerable and it makes me happy. The anticipation that you will pick my thoughts up when you log in, and hold in your mind the small tokens of my love for you.
**
That urge to tear apart what is supposed to be held together, where does it come from? Does it start in the womb and set out with the cut of the umbilical cord? Is the child’s separation from the mother the reason why humans are so obsessed with divisions, divorces and differences?
**
‘I was just thinking about what you said. You know, whether the urge to bind and separate is what makes us human … whether that is what love is all about. You know like the black-and-white
keys create music. So love is created through the pulsating space between belonging and liberty.’
**
I kept on asking those questions over and over. I was used to asking complex questions at work, big complicated questions that can go unanswered. The kinds of philosophical questions that expand the human mind. The questions I was asking about Aron shrank the valley of possibilities into howling tunnels that demanded immediate answers. The questions blurred my mind, reshaped it from an ingrained curiosity to a girdling circle.
**
‘Don’t be so harsh on yourself. There are no exams in love. So there are no mistakes either. It is all about how you play it.’
**
Aron killed my ability to move on to other men. It was impossible to unsee that pink shirt worn by another man, to unsmell Aron’s cologne on the underground. Other men could try to infect me with their love virus, but my cells were locked.
**
Lionel toyed with the keys, it sounded like a bird trilling in the woods. He had his eyes closed, I knew his mind was where Chopin’s was when he composed that piece. Not in a busy city, not in a crammed flat with an ill girl. His mind was running its own algorithm, serving him images away from London, with the mellow sound reflecting dew drops falling on birds’ feathers. Darkness had no power to disrupt that sequence. Lionel played and played, driving my thoughts in a carriage propelled by hundreds of notes bound together in a collective voice of our ancestors. We both had our eyes closed because it was a journey to light and its radiation was blinding us.
**
Maybe the algorithm knew more about love than either of us. Everything looked so pristine on the platform. There were no signs of hurt. Maybe the algorithm created a place where hearts do not get broken but are created anew.
About The Author:
Eleni Cay is a Slovakian-born poet living in England and Norway, and writing in English, Slovak, French, Norwegian and Spanish.. Her award-winning first collection ‘A Butterfly’s Trembling in the Digital Age’ was published by Cakanka in Slovakia, Parthian Books in the UK and Hein Verlag in Germany. Her poems appeared in many journals, including Acumen, Atticus Review, The Cardiff Review, Glasgow Review of Books, Envoi or Poetry Ireland Review. Eleni is known for her filmpoems, dancepoems and multimedia poetry, which have been screened at international festivals and featured on Button Poetry. Eleni’s debut novel ‘The Love Virus’ was published in spring 2020. In 2021, Poetry Space published Eleni’s chapbook ‘Celestial Heteroglossia’ and Black Spring Press her second collection ‘Love Algorithm’. Eleni is currently working on a sequel to her first novel.
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