Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco, Alastair McEwen

In Ocean Sea, Alessandro Baricco presents a hypnotizing postmodern fable of human malady--psychological, existential, erotic--and the sea as a means of deliverance.

At the Almayer Inn, a remote shoreline hotel, an artist dips his brush in a cup of ocean water to paint a portrait of the sea.
A scientist pens love letters to a woman he has yet to meet.
An adulteress searches for relief from her proclivity to fall in love.
And a sixteen-year-old girl seeks a cure from a mysterious condition which science has failed to remedy.
When these people meet, their fates begin to interact as if by design.