Thursday, June 28, 2018

Top ten books about unrequited love

Kirsty Gunn is an internationally awarded writer of novels, short stories, as well as a collection of fragments and meditations, and essays. Her latest novel is Caroline's Bikini.

One of Gunn's top ten books about unrequited love, as shared at the Guardian:
Middlemarch by George Eliot

Whirring away like the great engines of intelligence and imagination that they are, are the novels riven through with love that is never quite fulfilled because of the way life and chance get in the way. First, Eliot’s great novel, with the wonderfully wilful and misguided Dorothea and the man who she is barely aware loves her, the ever hopeful but ultimately disappointing Will Ladislaw, who flits away at her back trying to woo while she chooses another suitor before him.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Middlemarch also made Jeff Somers's top five memorable books set on New Year’s Eve (and Day), Lauren Groff's list of six favorite portrayals of marriage in literature, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best bankers in literature, ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature. It is among Emrys Westacott's five top books on philosophy & everyday living, Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Philip Pullman's six best books, Rebecca Goldstein's five best of novels of ideas, Tina Brown's five best books on reputation, Elizabeth Kostova favorite books, and Miss Manners' favorite novels. John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

--Marshal Zeringue