Tuesday, September 8, 2020

The best books about love

Kate Kellaway is a feature writer and deputy theatre critic for the Observer.

A reader wrote in asking her to "recommend some good romantic novels that are not cliched." Part of Kellaway's reply:
Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera is gorgeously sensual. For those seeking gay romance, André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies and What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell are winners (the last particularly elegiac and passionate). Also worth adding is Sally Rooney’s smash hit Conversations With Friends – balanced between sophistication and naivety; Colm Tóibín’s superb Brooklyn – exploring love when geography is not on its side; and Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday – a beautiful novella about a Jane who does not share Jane Eyre’s good luck.
Read about more of Kellaway's recommendations.

Love in the Time of Cholera also made Jojo Moyes's list of five happy literary novels, Isabella Hammad's list of six top books of correspondence, Sameer Rahim's list of five essential works by Gabriel García Márquez, Jill Boyd's top six list of memorable marriage proposals in literature, the Christian Science Monitor's list of six novels about grand passions, Ann Brashares' six favorite books list, and Marie Arana's list of the best books about love; it is one of Hugh Thomson’s top ten books on South American journeys.

--Marshal Zeringue