Saturday 9 February 2013


Love Story by Erich Segal
Love Story
by Erich Segal
Love means never having to say "this book is contrived".
Love. Ah, L’Amour. Love, that elusive eel of an emotion, forever slithering free of our best attempts to understand it, describe it, define it. One need only look at the media to be assured that love is among our chief concerns as a species. On the covers of magazines, headlines crow promises of finding it, while inside, people post ads for themselves, trying to attract it. Movies depict it perhaps more than any other subject – the yearning for love, the quest for love, its acquisition, its loss, its struggle to survive through the banality of the years. 

When we all want it, need it, crave it and revolve around it, why is it that love remains the most difficult subject to effectively put into words?

Attempting to put the entirety of love into words has been the hope, desire and often abject failure of writers worldwide. The difficulty is no new or unknown phenomenon, either. Take the title of Raymond Carver’s 1981 book of short stories – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.  Even within that title, we find an acknowledgement of the need for further elucidation. I want to refrain from rhapsodizing, and gushing about cultures that have a trillion words for snow and yet we have too few for love. And yet, our language really does limit us.

What DO we write about when we write about love? Approaches take different shapes, and more often than not, fall short.

There are romance novels, which are enormously popular and never go out of style. But they focus almost exclusively on the procurement aspect of love.  Two people meet, generally one of them longs for a domestic embrace while the other has eyes that flash dangerously and a refusal to be tamed. Eventually, after a series of misunderstandings, obstacles and teary episodes are smoothed out, the sigh of contentment and falling into each other’s arms is accomplished, and the story ends there, with the happy silhouettes against a sunset backdrop, and the promise of a forever future of liplocked bliss.  The stories end just as we realize the two lovebirds have found each other.
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare
Romeo & Juliet 
by William Shakespeare
Tragedy? Definitely. A Love Story? Debatably.

There are the racier ones, which blur the line between romance and erotica. But they are chiefly concerned with the sex aspect of love, the tantalizing agony that occurs when people are still dressed and prefer not to be. Entire novels are written as a slow tease, a torturous dance of lip-biting and flushed faces, and again, the eventual climax (sorry, sorry).  But even then, the stories end just as we realize the two lustbirds have found each other.

But what of love? Enduring, affectionate, friendly, ongoing, mutually admirable love? Where do we read about it? The stories stop too soon. Love isn't just infatuation, isn't just anticipation, and isn't just lust and sex. Then what? If you ask people to name famous love stories, Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo & Juliet will undoubtedly be mentioned. Good God, why? Two barely post-pubescent teenagers meet, become infatuated with one another, are married urgently and in secret, spend almost no time together (“Say...what’s your favorite color?”), and die horribly amid misery, grief, rivalry and misunderstanding. Is this love? Yikes.

Love is private jokes, and subtle shared eyerolls across the table at a dinner party. It is undoubtedly butterflies in the stomach (and other places!), but more than that it is the glorious intimacy of knowing how another likes their eggs cooked. It thrills us and relaxes us, all at once. We know what love is when we feel it. It is the most beautiful part of life, which doubles our joys and halves our grief.

C.S. Lewis said “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives,” and surely that sums up the heart, the root, the flowering bud of what love really is. But it is difficult to encapsulate, describe, or represent via the written word in any way that does it justice. When it is accomplished, it is to be applauded and celebrated.

To my mind, there is no such thing, yet, as the perfect love story, or an entire book that gets it quite right. Perhaps that’s the most intoxicating part about love, after all – it’s too magical and enormous to pin down, and continues to wriggle just out of our reach, refusing to be defined, but letting us enjoy it.

With that in mind, here is a selection of books I put together, some iconic classics, some lesser-known choices, that I think come close – whether just in a passage or two, or the overall tone, or the chemistry between characters – to having enough words for love.

The Best Love Stories

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
84 Charing Cross Road 
by Helene Hanff
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing 
by William Shakespeare
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Rules of Civility 
by Amor Towles
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Never Let Me Go 
by Kazuo Ishiguro
One Day by David Nicholls
One Day 
by David Nicholls
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Fingersmith 
by Sarah Waters
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The End of the Affair 
by Graham Greene
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Possession 
by A.S. Byatt
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
Brokeback Mountain 
by Annie Proulx
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
High Fidelity 
by Nick Hornby
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago 
by Boris Pasternak
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The English Patient 
by Michael Ondaatje
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Princess Bride 
by William Goldman
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre 
by Charlotte Bronte
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day 
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Atonement 
by Ian McEwan


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