Almost A Love Story is more literary than lusty

The qualifier "Almost" in the title is fair warning that this is not your average romance.

- Ong Sor Fern

ALMOST A LOVE STORY By Carissa Foo Fiction/Epigram Books/ Paperback/233 pages/$20.90 ★★☆☆☆ Singaporean author Carissa Foo's fourth novel offers a meta, nested narrative that is more literary than lusty.

Erin, married with a toddler, discovers that her ex, Wendell An Ling, has written a novella that seems inspired by their own youthful love affair.

Driven by a mix of curiosity, nostalgia and unresolved angst, she begins reading it at a bookshop while waiting for her husband and child. Her recollections of her relationship with Wendell are interspersed with excerpts from his tale that mark moments in the relationship between their literary doppelgangers Christopher and Marge Xu.

Erin and Wendell meet cute, crashing into each other on campus. Erin, the vegetarian heartlander, is bowled over by Wendell, the cosmopolitan scion of academic bluebloods who tosses around literary references and critical theories like other people use "lah" and "lor" in daily conversation.