MOST of us have a love story or two in our past – and who doesn't love a well-told love story? But, in terms of literary grist, it's only the twists and turns and black holes of despair associated with love not requited, or love somehow gone bad, that make the mill wheel turn. These are the love stories truly worth reading – the rest are as disposable as Valentine's Day flowers.
Jeffrey Eugenides – he of The Virgin Suicides (a million sold, but also said to be the most shoplifted book of recent times) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex – has brought together in one meaty volume (26 stories, 531 pages) as absorbing, sha
rply-written and all-encompassing a collection of tales about love as you're likely to find.
Eugenides says: "I offer this book as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery... Read these love stories not to confirm the brutal realities of love, but to experience its many variegated compensatory pleasures..." For him, love stories depend on disappointment, unequal birth, feuding families, boredom and cold hearts.
The title is from a verse by Roman poet Catullus, thought to be the first in the ancient world to write about the personal love story in any extended way when he lamented his doomed love for a woman he
called "Lesbia".
Harold Brodkey's First Love and Other Sorrows tells of a beautiful romantic who has her ideas about marrying for love extinguished by an ambitious mother. A clever layer of psychological acuity is added by the voicing of the story by the girl's younger brother.
With Spring in Fialta, Vladimir Nabokov deals wistfully with a love destined never to be, and in The Lady With The Little Dog, Anton Chekhov delves into how a holiday interlude between two dissatisfied people turns into a potent drama when each realises later that what they wrote off as small is, in fact, extraordinary. Not until they are separated do Gurov and Anna recognise love for what it is, because neither had ever guessed they had the capacity to feel this way.
David Bezmozgis's Natasha is the all-too-knowing 14-year-old Russian girl who awakens sexuality in a teenage Canadian boy, and Some Other, Better Otto is Deborah Eisenberg's profound exploration of how a too often taken for granted love can be a lifesaver.
These are all memorable stories – some for their pathos, a few for their quasi-comedic slant, and others simply for the beauty and penetration of the writing. William Trevor's Lovers of Their Time follows a middle-aged and married estate agent who falls for a shop girl in '60s' London.
When the relationship becomes legitimate, their bubble hits the cold air of alimony and living with the in-laws and quickly bursts.
Everyday lies and their chilling erosion of emotion is at the heart of The Bad Thing by David Gates, and Lorrie Moore's How To Be An Other Woman is very much a tract about why you shouldn't attempt that role.
The Bear Came Over The Mountain is the heart-stopping Alice Munro short story that inspired the film Away From Her, and Julie Christie's multi-award-winning performance as loving wife Fiona who succumbs to Alzheimer's Disease. Her husband's devotion endures the ultimate test, as he witnesses the transfer of her affections to a fellow resident of a care home.
These stories bring together the reasons we love and the desperate feelings evoked when love chews you up or spits you out. In short, a must-read for lovers of great writing – and of love.
ed Jeffrey Eugenides
HarperPress, £14.99.
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