The Secret Lives of People in Love is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of grace, intensity, atmosphere, and compassion. Love, loss, frailty, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.

"Van Booy's prose is as economical as it is powerful. His characters are so real — and their stories so poignant — that I yearned to reach out and assure them of my understanding." Caroline Upcher

"Simon Van Booy's stories have the power and resonance of poems. They stay with you like a significant memory." Roger Rosenblatt

"Van Booy is a remarkable young writer. Taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, in spite of their evanescence, are frozen for a moment in these stories and celebrated, along with their subtle interconnection, in all the aspects of love." Fred Volkmer

"[L]ovely and genuinely touching. This talented author bears watching." Kirkus Reviews

"[Van Booy] shows an uncanny ability to create intense moods and emotions within the space of a few poetic paragraphs." Booklist

"Simon Van Booy's stories have the power and resonance of poems. They stay with you like a significant memory."-Roger Rosenblatt

"Van Booy is a remarkable young writer. Taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, in spite of their evanescence, are frozen for a moment in these stories and celebrated, along with their subtle interconnection, in all the aspects of love."-Fred Volkmer

The Secret Lives of People in Loveis the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of grace, intensity, atmosphere, and compassion. Love, loss, frailty, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.

Born in London, Simon Van Booygrew up in Wales. A keen rugby player, he was recruited to play football for Campbellsville University in Kentucky. He eventually returned to England, where he graduated from Dartington College of Arts. Now a New Yorker, he teaches at the School of Visual Arts and in the Bard College Clemente Course. As a freelance journalist, he writes for several New York newspapers. He has won a first-place award for in-depth reporting from the New York Press Association.

"Simon Van Booy's stories have the power and resonance of poems. They stay with you like a significant memory."-Roger Rosenblatt "Van Booy is a remarkable young writer. Taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, in spite of their evanescence, are frozen for a moment in these stories and celebrated, along with their subtle interconnection, in all the aspects of love."-Fred Volkmer The Secret Lives of People in Love is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of grace, intensity, atmosphere, and compassion. Love, loss, frailty, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.

Simon Van Booy was born in the suburbs of London in 1975. He has since lived in Athens, Paris, and Kentucky. Van Booy has written for the New York Times, the New York Post, and the New York Sun, while publishing fiction and poetry in various journals and magazines. In 2003, he was awarded the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. Van Booy teaches humanities at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, at Long Island University, and in the Bard College Clemente Course. He lives in New York City.