Ghosts by Daylight

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Janine and Bruno first fell in love as young reporters in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Years later – after endless phone calls, much of what the French call malentendu, secret trysts in foreign cities, numerous break-ups, three miscarriages, countless stories of rebel armies and a dozen wars that had passed between them – they arrive in Paris one rainy January to begin a new life together. The remnants of their separate lives, now left behind, are tentatively unpacked into their shared apartment on the Right Bank: Bruno’s heavy blanket from Ethiopia, a set of long feathered arrows from Brazil, an ash tray stolen from a hotel in Algeria, and Janine’s flak-jacket and canvas boots, still full of sand from the Western Desert in Iraq. But having met in another lifetime – in another world – ordinary, civilian life doesn’t come easily. War has become part of them: it had brought them together, and, though both are damaged by it, neither can quite leave it behind. And the difficult journey that follows, through their mix of joy and terror at becoming parents, Bruno’s battle with post-traumatic stress and addiction, and Janine’s determination to make France her home, leads to an understanding of the truth that people who deeply love each other cannot always live together.