The number of contemporary novels which deal with the theme of love would probably number in the thousands. But the idea of a mature woman falling in love with a much younger man is less common, perhaps due to the gender-related strictures already discussed under Social Concerns.

Obviously when the woman is much older, the situation still holds some shock value.

Canadian novelist Constance BeresfordHowe created a parallel situation in her short gem of a novel The Book of Eve (1973).

Her protagonist Eva is a sixty-five-year-old woman who feels suffocated by her long marriage to the arthritic, emotionally cold Burt. One day, after no particular forethought or planning, she leaves their home in a comfortable suburb of Montreal and finds a cheap basement apartment on her own. Her abandonment of responsibility is shocking enough to her family and friends, but the scandal escalates when she takes...