Some love affairs mark our lives forever. Whether we call them "la grande passion, " tragic romance, or "l'amour fou, " they remain indelible because they are impossible. Why do we fall in love at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and with the wrong person? Why do we put up with the anxiety, the pain, the shame, and the longing never fulfilled?

This brilliant book explores the nature of these "marvelous disasters" and finds a deeper necessity in the betrayals, taboos, and excesses of impossible love. Using perhaps the greatest of all tragic romances-the passion between Heloise and...