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Shadow Tagby Louse Erdrich. Erdrich uses the Native American concept of the shadow as the double of the soul -- "a soul could be captured through a shadow" -- to explore the connections beneath the marriage of Gil and Irene. Gil paints portraits of Irene: he "placed his foot on Irene's shadow when he painted her. And though she tried to pull away, it was impossible to tug that skein of darkness from under his heel." Symmetry, opposition, and erasure are all possible endings for love: we become what we love but do we destroy or enhance through our loving? In the violent and mercurial relationship between Gil and Irene there is no release from their entwined identities and despair all around.
The Companion by Lorcan Roche. This is a novel about kindness and love, frustration and anger, and affection as the connecting force between one person and another. Trevor, narrator of the novel, is a caretaker of the infirm, disabled, and weak. Through the kindness of his care, he redresses the unfairness of their illnesses. While he cannot cure his patients, he can make their disabilities feel not quite so disabling or terrible. He himself has been succored through unhappiness by the loving kindnesses of his mother. Trevor is a healthy and robust Don Quixote, tilting at the windmills of pettiness, selfishness, greed, and cold calculation, and trying to bring kindness, affection, and compassion back into the equation of human relationships.
Invisibleby Paul Auster explores absolutes of sex, love, and beauty. The story of Adam Walker is a story of a man dramatically handsome, drawn to women who grant him absolute license in exploring sexuality, and in love with a woman who is soulmate, sister, and savior. What do absolutes do to our ability to perceive truth, or if not, truth, at least the full picture? They diminish our perceptions by cloaking what lies underneath beauty, sex, love, sorrow, and evil. Invisibility is the cloak. We use it to hide what we don't want others to know about ourselves; but what is the risk of hiding? Truth wants out, and will finds its way through the telling of a story, fact or fiction, fantasy or reality.
The Darts of Cupidby Edith Templeton. The characters in these stories are open-minded in their pursuit of love and sex but caught by the strictures of their own hearts, by desire waxing and waning, and by longing for more. Templeton layers on wit and verve to hide the the deeper, tragic truth of what is going on in her stories: war, betrayal, last chances. The stories don't end with sweeping conclusions but with instead with true-to-life scenes about the natural endings of things; of regret, loss, and sorrow, all tinged with the bit of happiness to have loved at all, for once.
The African Queenby C.S. Forester. This is a wonderful love story, every bit as great as the movie, and a perfect companion read to the movie, as it offers the rich personal histories of Rose and Charlie (Ulnutt through most of the book) as well as the political history of the time. The falling in love, its consummation, and its transformative powers play out in the lush, harsh, and beautiful landscape of the Ulanga river, and the African Queen herself plays a role in this unlikely but completely engaging coupling of two great characters.
The Devil's Tickets by Gary M. Pomerantz. This marvelous book about the game of bridge (the Puritans called playing cards the devil?s tickets) and the enterprise of marriage examines how rules for both changed in the early half of the twentieth century, and illustrates the connection between the wild popularity of bridge and the newly accepted sexuality and intelligence of women. American capitalist energy, told through the story of how one man infused bridge with sex and power to reach thousands of housebound and frustrated women and guarantee himself fame and riches, and American temper, told through the story of one fateful night of bridge and a bid gone wrong resulting in murder, combine in this history of five couples and their marriages, unions that end in death or divorce but never in happily ever after.
A Great Day for a Ballgameby Fielding Dawson. In this really lovely and very sexy novel of blooming love, Dawson lets his readers become the man who meets a woman and falls for her, complete with stuttered lines, quaking thoughts, and perfectly suave moments followed by utter muck-ups. Once together, the couple make a complete picture of understood meanings, thrusting desire, and heartfelt domesticity. Both have been there and done that but are still fresh and wide-eyed in their love for each other. There are awkward and sweet courtship moments, wonderful sex scenes, and long, twisting, and very real conversations between the lovers: what ties all the pieces together is Dawson's insistence that all individuals who are united by love or desire can be interchanged, mixed and separated, but will be joined forever.
Conjugal Love by Alberto Moravia. Moravia is always provocative in how he portrays sexual relationships and this book is no exception. What is unusual is that his narrator abstains from sex for a good part of the novel (although he has explicit reminiscences). What is also delightfully unusual is the bizarre and animalistic warm-up dance the narrator's wife has before getting down to sex on the threshing floor, loose straw and fancy dinner dress be damned. Moravia is all about human folly and sex is where we humans excel: this book is an entertaining and thought-provoking look at conjugal bliss.
The Sun Field by Heywood Braun. A charming, witty, and totally fresh outlook on love between friends, lust between lovers, and how never the twin shall meet. Reissued after being out of print for 85 years this fast-moving tale of triangle love is great. Set in 1920s New York City, George Wallace, the narrator, is in love with his best pal, Judith Winthrop. She is a feminist before the word became common, strong-willed and smart, insightful and kind, and quite willing to call things exactly as she sees them. George takes her out to a ball game one day and when Judith sees Tiny Tyler, professional ball player, perform an incredible feat of athleticism and beauty out on the sun field (baseball field) she falls in lust at first sight. Based on Heywood himself, his wife Ruth Hale, and the now-legend, then-infamous Babe Ruth, this novel is genuine and engaging from start to end. A History of Loveby Nicole Krauss. Tells the story of Leo Gursky: "He was a great writer. He fell in love. It was his life." And it is the story of every person affected by the book he wrote for the woman he loved: the friend who lost everyone and to find someone again, stole the story; Alma, the woman who starred, again and again, in the story (she is the soul of the story, as "alma" means soul in Spanish); the son who had the story read to him and only too late comes to understand its significance; a different Alma, trying to help her mother find love again, trying to help her brother Bird be normal and not be a chosen one, and trying to understand the life of a woman who left Poland, leaving love behind, and began love and life all over again.
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. Tells the story of an eccentric family in the world of England between two world wars, and the friendship between two cousins, the narrator Fanny and the beautiful and electric Linda. Pursuing love is almost always a rebellion of some sort, against common sense or family or tradition: it is an effort to identify your own self through loving, and being loved by, another person. Sure of her family's adoration but bored by its limits, Linda rebels. Fanny, deserted by her own parents yet sure of who she is (and who she is not: her mother) doesn't. They both find love, but Linda's path is rocky, tough, and long; Fanny's, level and smooth. Linda does find "the great love of her life": Mitford ends with, "One always thinks that. Every, every time." Of course we do; if we did not, it would not be love we were pursuing; and not its capture, finally, that we celebrate.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This charming and down-dirty story about lucky and plucky Alice, her clumsy sister Eloise, and their dog-rescuing, ex-junkie mother, presents the hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking ways people intertwine, overlap and just plain run over each other in the acts of love, friendship, sex, and gambling -- and all other acts of resistance.
Waiting in Vain by Colin Channer. This novel tells the story of two men from Jamaica, one tortured by his past
and one fully grounded in his, who have to make profound choices about
love and friendship amidst competing pressures of artistic, ethnic, and
economic identity. Channer gives us compelling characters and a great plot, along with great sex, good food, and enticing play lists of music and books -- and
lots and lots of ideas on life and how to live it.
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. Within the first sentences, we learn that this will be a "sad story" of two couples who meet at a spa for those weak of heart. We are led to believe the sadness is in the death of parts of each couple, and although we are right, we have no idea how terribly right we are. The true story of sex and passion unfolds, bit by bit, hint by hint, detail by detail, and no one and nothing is as first appearances had promised. Deceits multiply, tensions escalate, and fate beckons its bony and horrible finger.
The English Major by Jim Harrison. This hilarious and thoughtful novel is about a sixty-year old professor who sets out on a road trip to get out of a rut. An unexpected passenger turns up in the form of an ex-student and his trip is blown way off course when she turns out to be an inexhaustible love machine. Sex is a big theme in this book: the nature of it, why men want it, who women want it, and why the heck does desire flame and fizzle out, and then reappear again? Desire and its manifestation in the active male organ is a strange nut to crack (no pun intended) but Harrison does his best to understand the whys and wherefores of sex, desire, and the place it all comes together, the temple of love.
To Siberia by Per Pettersen. This is a beautiful story about love between a brother and a sister, how complete it is, how together, the two of them can face all sorts of hardship and heartbreak and, because they are together, they will survive. They dream of worlds very different from what they know (the brother wants to go to Marrakesh and the girl, to Siberia); the dreams float always before them, enticing them forward. When separated, they each seek to find love again but find only sex, a poor substitute for the chaste and profound love they shared with each other.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. A wedding night, the ultimate setting of love and sex, is the framework of this story. McEwan takes his time with the story, bringing us slowly but surely to the wedding night anticipated by both Florence and Edward (Florence with fearful disgust of what is in store, and Edward in ecstatic longing), and carrying us back in time to their courtship and into their own histories. We become so involved with the two of them -- we care so much for them -- that by the time the wedding bed is reached, we are hoping against hope that their physical union will not be the disaster it portends to be.
The Three of Us by Julia Blackburn. This is the true story of the very screwed up marriage and love affairs of Blackburn's parents, and the impact their relationships had on her own development as a sexual being. The book flows beautifully, albeit painfully, and it is a page turner to the end. We are desperate to be assured of Blackburn's survival, body and soul, and in the end, thankfully, we are.
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing. This novel is a warning against sex and love, and what it gets you. All you want is a perfect life of family, hearth, and home? What you get is a hell of competing demands of cooking, cleaning, laundry, and holiday entertaining for the multitudes, together with monstrous children and an unappealing aging spouse. Good luck.
Will Work for Drugs
by Lydia Lunch. The horrific essays on early sexual abuse and
subsequent uses of sexual manipulation, frustration, and
experimentation, along with the quasi-fictional pieces on
sadomasochistic physical and mental couplings provide an antithesis to
popular media portrayals of sexuality. By forcing readers to witness
what sex is when shorn of all affection, warmth, or sympathy, her
pieces underscore the structure that healthy and good sex thrives on:
mutual pleasure and warmth in the act, and a foundation of love, not
necessarily in the relationship at hand but as an underpinning of life.
Love experienced in life and love for life is the optimal structure
upon which all connections, mental, physical, and spiritual, can
flourish.
Lunch's ability to connect even after the abuses of her childhood are
testament to her commitment to life.
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