Displays of Affection

With pen and ink, and with gentle understanding, France's most acclaimed cartoonist explores the question of the delicate balance. "Displays of Affection" pictures love in cozy parlors, on a starry night, in chic apartments, on a windswept beach, on a wobbly bicycle. Close to 100 drawings and captions evoke tenderness, melancholy, skirmish, and triumph. "Vulnerability is la condition humaine," Sempe told "The New York Times." In this funny and moving book, his lovers and couples prove it every time. Sempe's people live in a world that is not necessarily easy for lovers. (After all, out of 2000 possible lovers, how do you find the ideal one?) But as they struggle to find each other nevertheless, they often discover, like the couple dancing alone to the strains of a full-piece orchestra in their own backyard, that "things seem to sort themselves out."