In Andrea Canobbio’s Three Light-Years, the narrator (who makes several discreet appearances at the beginning and the ending of the novel) imagines the three years, which led to his birth, before his mother’s pregnancy. This is the frame, or rather, the pretext of the drama involving two main characters: his father, Claudio, and the woman he falls in love with, Cecilia—both doctors in the same hospital. In intelligent, thoughtful prose—for which we have to thank the translator, Anne Milano Appel—Canobbio takes us through the daily lives of these characters. For a while, Claudio, who is unattached, seems both like a hopeless lover and a voyeur into Cecilia’s life, a recently divorced woman with two growing children. Then, the balance shifts, and Cecilia responds to Claudio’s attentions. When, finally, the reader is led to believe that a relationship between the two is possible, fate intervenes: Claudio is introduced to Silvia, Cecilia’s eccentric sister. The novel’s ending is somewhat ambiguous, yet the narrator gives us subtle hints about how he grew up and who raised him, so we can imagine the outcome of the drama between Claudio, Cecilia and Silvia. This is a novel about contemporary couples, which should resonate with readers everywhere.