At the age of 44, Hippolyte Sicher’s life is completely successful. Having attended medical school because he didn’t trust doctors, he has become a respected neuropsychiatrist in a major Parisian hospital. He has even achieved fame for a bestseller he wrote about a young female patient with Pick’s disease, a neurological affliction that can feature uninhibited libido in its victims. Between his easy-going secretary and his exuberant best friend, Hippolyte Sicher leads a comfortable existence allowing him the time and leisure to satisfy his two main passions: music and plant therapy (he still doesn’t trust doctors).
Yet there is a skeleton in Dr. Sicher’s closet. At the age of 24, he left the woman he loved on their wedding day. Since then, he has blacked the crisis leading to the break-up out of his memory. Yet 20 years later, he will make an amazing discovery: he possesses the faculty of traveling back through time. There is just one condition: he can revisit his own life only, witnessing his past thoughts and actions.
And so begins a double existence: the first, by day, in the pitiless world of the hospital; the second, by night, in the eternal sunshine of his youth. As he gives in once again to the charms of the lovely Mado, succumbing for the second time to spell-binding passion, he becomes obsessed with certain questions: who is this young man whom he no longer recognizes? Why did he leave this delightful young woman? And most importantly, above all, would the past, by any chance, agree to let itself be changed?

Only Love pursues the theme of duality addressed in Metaphysical Dog (destiny repeating itself two centuries later), Self-Portrait with Can-Opener (familial determinism and mimicry) and The Cutthroat’s Poetry (duplication with a psychiatric and symbolic aspect). Here, the approach is exclusively one of fantasy, and the theme is addressed from the angle of purely psychological duality. As in Ségur’s earlier books, readers will enjoy the suspense and humor in this initiatory novel.