The Illusion of Forever follows Daniel Devos, an ethics scholar who moves to Paris after a failed marriage, seeking philosophical understanding of his collapse. He meets Claire, an artist, and believes he has found salvation in their intense connection. They marry and have children, Luca and Sophie, but Claire's postpartum depression creates fractures Daniel cannot navigate despite his intellectual training.
Claire's subsequent affair with Mark is less a cause than a symptom of their disconnection. The discovery triggers a devastating sequence: divorce, custody battles, and ultimately parental alienation. Claire, consciously or unconsciously, begins rewriting history, transforming Daniel from father into villain in their children's eyes. The legal system, meant to protect children, becomes an instrument of suffering, granting Claire primary custody while Daniel's connection to Luca and Sophie progressively disintegrates through strained visits, unanswered calls, and growing estrangement.
The novel spans years of Daniel's attempts to maintain bonds across an unbridgeable void as his children grow into adulthood carrying a distorted narrative of their past. Yet this is not pure despair. Through Hélène, Daniel discovers a different kind of relationship—one built on mutual recognition and shared sorrow rather than romantic projection. Their life together, alongside Daniel's engagement with Buddhist concepts of impermanence and non-self, offers not recovery but survival strategies for living with irresolvable grief.
A late encounter with Claire brings mutual acknowledgment of how they weaponized their children, though this changes nothing materially. The novel refuses easy resolutions or villains, instead offering an unflinching examination of how love curdles through human weakness, how systems magnify suffering, and how one might bear catastrophic loss with dignity and truth.