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Alain de Botton. Essays in Love

2007, Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy

Review of "Essays in Love" by Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton

Essays in love.

'De Botton is a national treasure.' - Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black A unique love story and a classic work of philosophy, rooted in the mysterious workings of the human heart and mind. Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved. A man and woman on a flight from Paris to London, and so begins their love story. From first kiss to first argument, infatuation to heartbreak, de Botton illuminates each stage of their relationship with a clarity both startling and tender. With the verve of a novelist and the insight of a philosopher, Essays in Love unveils the mysteries of the human heart. It is essential reading for anyone seeking instruction in the art of love.

The book's success has much to do with its beautifully modelled sentences, its wry humour and its unwavering deadpan respect for its reader's intelligence . . . full of keen observation and flashes of genuine lyricism, acuity and depth. Francine Prose, author of The Vixen and Lovers at the Chameleon Club

Witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights The Spectator

De Botton is a national treasure. Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black

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Publisher's summary

Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.

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Grace Evans, an overworked New Yorker looking for a total escape from her busy life, books an Airbnb on a ranch in the middle of Wyoming. When she arrives at the idyllic getaway, she’s pleased to find that the owner is a handsome man by the name of Calvin Wells—and he’s eager to introduce her to his easygoing way of life. But there are things Grace discovers that she’s not too pleased about: a lack of cell phone service. A missing woman. And a feeling that something isn’t right with the ranch.

Worst. Ever. NOT a true twist. Juvenile writing and story,

• By Whitney Lahann on 04-29-23

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• Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 442
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 357
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 358

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of chairs, walls, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet, a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.

Many elegant words used for a simple topic.

• By Spirit on 08-15-17

The Art of Travel

• Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 177
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 155
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 155

Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.

Dull, suggestions for better alternatives

• By J. Natael on 08-07-13

• Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 600
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 426
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 421

This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned: an anxiety about what others think of us, about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety. Best-selling author Alain de Botton asks, with lucidity and charm, where our worries about status come from and what, if anything, we can do to surmount them.

False Advertising!

• By Jon on 08-02-07

How to Think More Effectively

• A Guide to Greater Productivity, Insight, and Creativity
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 28
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 23
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 23

We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also unpredictable, spending large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. This is a book about how to optimize these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfill our potential and achieve the contentment we deserve.

El placer del amor [Essays on Love]

• By: Alain de Botton, Juan José Del Solar Bardelli - translator
• Narrated by: Carlos Valdés
• Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
• Overall 3.5 out of 5 stars 3
• Performance 3.5 out of 5 stars 2
• Story 3 out of 5 stars 2

Un día gris cualquiera, un hombre cualquiera y un vuelo de lo más aburrido entre París y Londres...y de repente, ese hombre levanta la vista y ve a Chloe, su vecina de asiento, una joven de ojos verde agua, hombros quebradizos y uñas mal cuidadas. Cuando el avión aterriza, él ya sabe que esa es la mujer de su vida. Es más: su amor es único y va a ser eterno. 

By: Alain de Botton , and others

On Being Nice

• Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 1
• Performance 0 out of 5 stars 0
• Story 0 out of 5 stars 0

Much of today's media tells us to be thinner, richer, and more successful. This book tells us how to be nicer. Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but we can all benefit from practical advice on how to be more patient, better at listening, less irritable, and less defensive. This is a guidebook to the uncharted landscape of niceness, gently exploring the key themes of this often overlooked quality.

The School of Life: On Failure

• How to Succeed at Defeat
• Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 5
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 5
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 5

This is a hopeful, consoling, gentle book about failure. Our societies talk a lot about success, but the reality is that no one gets through life without failing–in small and usually also in large ways. Sometimes our failures are very obvious, at other times, we feel we have to conceal them out of shame. This book encourages us to accept the role that failure plays for all of us and to feel compassion for ourselves for the messes we can’t help but make as we go through our lives.

The second part of the book was really good perceived failure.

• By Anonymous User on 12-29-23

What listeners say about Essays in Love

• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.4 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 180
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.5 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 170
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.3 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 152

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

Thought provoking and well performed

I enjoyed this peek into the brain of a young man contemplating love and romance, and found it to be enlightening and relatable. The narrator keeps things moving along crisply, which is crucial since much of the book is comprised not of action but of musings. I look forward to listening to The Course of Love next.

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• Reem Alsmaiel

Enjoyable read

I enjoyed this book thoroughly. I liked how it captured the man’s point of view throughout the relationship journey. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding love in all its stages.

Brilliantly plucks and weaves love's nuances

What did you love best about Essays in Love?

The story is engaging. There are really good points made, great references, and de Botton analyzes the nuances of falling in and out of love with the perspective and depth of someone who's lived a thousand lives. The narrator's voice is very attractive.

What does James Wilby bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Great voice. Very warm and theatrical (not in an exaggerated way) at the same time.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. It was so hard to even go to sleep. I had my Audible on sleep timer several times but didn't want to miss anything to grogginess. So I would relisten the same parts the next day. This book is so wise.

Any additional comments?

Definitely listen to this.

3 people found this helpful

• Overall 4 out of 5 stars
• Performance 3 out of 5 stars
• Story 4 out of 5 stars

• Anonymous User

Good story, poor narration

The narrator is too dramatic which unfortunately ruins some moments. I enjoyed the story though.

• Colby L Mortensen

Unbearably profound in its complexity and depth. So attuned to the nuances of romances spells, and an amazing gift of disillusionment.

• Performance 4 out of 5 stars

• Maria L. Lantin

Every relationship you've ever analyzed

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I wouldn't recommend this book to all my friends but I know that some of them would enjoy it as much as I did. It's for romantics that think too much sometimes. It's for realists that love to fall in love nevertheless.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Essays in Love?

There are many memorable moments...but perhaps what stands out now after a couple weeks is the way intimacy in the couple is revealed and lost. The fight scenes are funny in a "oh yeah, I've been there" kinda way.

Have you listened to any of James Wilby’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

It was my first James Wilby book and I enjoyed his reading very much.

Who was the most memorable character of Essays in Love and why?

I guess it was the main male character because he's so introspective to the point of absurdity but also insightful.

5 people found this helpful

• Andre Mendes

One day binge

Simply could not put this book down. There are so few stories, love stories fewer still, that capture real life so well. The book itself is a beautiful mix of philosophical topics with narrative that makes for such an enlightening and enjoyable listening experience. Very well performed, I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a realistic love story.

2 people found this helpful

• Story 3 out of 5 stars

So close but not quite

I really like Alain de Botton, and really wanted to love this book but unfortunately the narrative pales in comparison to his philosophical digressions. Having said that, it did make me see my past relationships in a new light. The narrator was very good, although his female voice could be better.

Bewildering!

The narrator's voice was sublime, as always. The story in itself was mundane, much unlike the author's take on love and his stunning talent in analyzing every psychological aspect of its every stages.

I love this story.

I like the life nugget sprinkled through out this love story. It’s so real. Need to listen to it again.

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Book Review: Essays in Love // Alain de Botton

As soon as the final word on the final page of Essays in Love ended, I felt a strong impulse to write about how this book made me feel, so here goes.

This book is a rarity. Feeling so content and warm when reading a book happens only on occasion, and this book has been successful in doing so. Written by Alain de Botton as his first novel in such a beautifully poetic manner, Essays in Love documents a passionate and tender relationship between a man and a woman, which happened coincidentally and ends inevitably. Told from the man’s perspective, his philosophical stance on love for his other half Chloe paints an intricate picture of how intense love can be. He marks each part of the relationship in chronological order, each chapter as a mini philosophical essay, going into great depth about simple details of their relationship such as seducing her, saying ‘I love you’, silently arguing through ‘romantic terrorism’ and wanting to commit suicide when it’s over. This all may sound slightly obsessive – which it essentially is – but through de Botton’s flowing and softly-spoken writing style, it’s as if the novel is being whispered to you (in the least creepy way possible).

The novel begins with their meeting on a flight, which sounds clichéd but it captures the surprise and coincidence love can bring. The characterisation of the speaker depicts him as a clearly highly intelligent and profound man, whose analytical thinking allows us directly into his mind and how well he can breakdown and evaluate love. As the chapters progress, so too does the relationship, which starts off awkward but grows and grows into a strong adoration for one another. His observations of the little mannerisms and physical attributes of Chloe which he found to be beautiful were extremely poignant, as are the moral questions he asks about love such as “If she really is so wonderful, how could she love someone like me?” and “Is it not my right to be loved and her duty to love me?”

The relationship between the speaker and Chloe is one of normality; it’s nothing spectacular. What really makes it so special, however, is the way the story is told in such detail and depth. Each sentence is sculpted so flawlessly; the last couple of chapters are particularly stunning, as the book doesn’t simply describe being in love, but also being out of love, and these chapters deal with getting over a break-up in such a raw and realistic manner. Describing Chloe’s affair with the speaker’s work partner Will was heart-wrenching to read, particularly due to how deep his affections for her were, but the beauty of it is how realistic it is – it’s not all magic and fairy tales, it’s just an ordinary relationship (if such a thing exists).

The book often references philosophers and analogies from philosophy which may be slightly confusing if you don’t have prior philosophical knowledge; however this does not affect the book as a whole. It can, at times, be quite challenging to grasp due to the scope of language used, but this generally makes the book so much more sophisticated.

Whether you are falling in, have fallen or have fallen out of love, Essays in Love will explain all the complexities, unanswered questions, underlying feelings and strange sensations love seems to entail. This book is a treasure, one which is highly underrated, and I am left blown away by its beauty. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to recommend this novel to everyone and anyone who’s willing to listen.

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Essays in love audible audiobook – unabridged.

Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.

• Listening Length 7 hours and 14 minutes
• Author Alain de Botton
• Narrator James Wilby
• Audible release date December 6, 2010
• Language English
• Publisher Audible Studios
• ASIN B004FDUMSI
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
• See all details

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Essays in Love (On Love) by Alain de Botton

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

B : weaknesses galore, but clever enough, with his trademark digressions, that we do recommend it

See our review for fuller assessment.

   From the Reviews : "Alain de Botton picks up the torch, so to speak, more or less where Stendhal left off. De Botton�s On Love reads as if Stendhal had lived into the �90s, survived modern critical theory (as he clearly has), thought it was funny (as he likely would have), but retained a novelist�s sympathy for the impulse -- which he shared -- to deconstruct and to dissect in search of some higher understanding." - Francine Prose, The New Republic "The result is something like La Rochefoucauld�s maxims crossed with Adolphe, with jokes and against a background of luggage reclaim areas and breakfast cereal packets. (...) Ingeniously pinpointed mundane details stop the novel from getting too abstract. It is witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights." - Gabriele Annan, The Spectator Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review 's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

The complete review 's Review :

       Baby-faced in appearance, Gallic in name and often in attitude, English Wunderkind De Botton has achieved notable (and somewhat galling) success at an early age, with five books to his name before he turned thirty. On Love was his first novel ( Essays in Love , as the British original had it) -- though there are also similarly themed later novels, Kiss & Tell and The Romantic Movement . Love preoccupies the young author, as well it might, and though a big subject to tackle, De Botton tackles well.        The story of this novel is simplicity itself: a love affair, from its very beginning to its very end. De Botton's narrator describes falling in love with Chloe, being in love with her, and then getting over her. An old story, the twist here is in how De Botton relates it, dwelling and (over)analyzing each and every aspect, and looking to see greater truths in them.        De Botton is intelligent, and he chooses to approach his book cleverly. Clever and intelligent do not always mix, but De Botton manages quite well. Each relatively short chapter is further divided into numbered paragraphs, each a brief point (or often a brief digression) illuminating various aspects of the love between Chloe and the narrator -- and love in general. Young, well-educated, fairly well to do, neither is completely sympathetic. Part of De Botton's success is that he shows us everyday love in characters who are not particularly appealing. He revels in considering all aspects of love, including -- or rather, especially -- the mundane and everyday and trivial. There are charts and pictures and diagrams, and some of it is too cute and forced, but overall it is indeed a clever little book.        It is a young author's book, and we occasionally grimace at some of what De Botton tries -- but it is a difficult subject to handle well. Other people's love affairs are often not the most interesting of subjects, especially when one deals with the everyday minutiae, but for most of the book De Botton keeps us hooked with his interesting thoughts on love's many aspects. The almost banal affair itself does stifle the narrative (De Botton's strength is certainly essayistic, which is why his Proust book is far superior to the novels), but there are enough well-conceived flights of fancy to keep the reader amused.        In her review Francine Prose makes particular note of the chapter entitled Marxism , where the Marxism in question is not Karl's, but rather the Groucho's who didn't want to belong to any club that would have him. It is that sort of cleverness that fills the book, and those who are put off by it should turn elsewhere. Prose is correct in expecting that those who can't appreciate this notion (which De Botton handles very cleverly) would not enjoy the book. We would argue that the book is, on some level, even more demanding than that. De Botton is intelligent, and the book is rich in allusion and reference. While most of this is enjoyable, it is perhaps the place where he truly goes wrong: the references are too clever for the quality of his narrative (he is not quite up to snuff in the story-telling department yet), and so readers are left either disappointed by the writing or confused by the references.        We still recommend this book rather highly, as an interesting failed effort, with enough quality, humor, and cleverness (and love-talk !) to satisfy. Like all of De Botton's book, it makes one think -- though without being overly taxing.

About the Author :

       English author Alain de Botton was born in Switzerland in 1969 and educated at Cambridge.

© 1999-2010 the complete review Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links

• TV & Audio
• New Republic

Essays in Love: Reviews

Gabriele Annan in The Spectator, 30 October 1993

On a BA flight from Paris to London the narrator picks up Chloe who happens to be sitting in the next seat. He takes her out to dinner, they go bed together, fall in love and begin a serious affair. After a while Chloe loses interest. On the BA flight back from a weekend in Paris, she confesses that she has slept with the narrator’s American friend Will. The narrator is devastated. Chloe follows Will to California. The narrator botches a suicide attempt (vitamin C instead of sleeping pills) and falls into a long depression from which he emerges three pages from the end while sitting next to Rachel at a dinner party. The following week and in the last paragraph, Rachel accepts his invitation to dine.

That’s the whole plot and it holds one’s attention. The characters live: the narrator, introvert, analytical, fastidious, alarmingly well-read and indefinably old-fashioned; and Chloe, modern, extrovert, relaxed, relentlessly unsentimental. He loves the films of Eric Rohmer, she hates them. The author is very good at getting across what it is that attracts the hero (his alter ego?) to Chloe: her generosity, her self-deprecation, her throw-away charm, expressed through the way she talks. The dialogue is convincing and engaging.

But the plot is not the whole story by any means. The chapters have headings like ‘Romantic Fatalism’, ‘Romantic Terrorism’, ‘Intermittences of the Heart’. The book is a psycho-philosophical treatise on love, the paragraphs numbered and ironically illustrated with diagrams; the first one is a mathematical calculation of the chances of Chloe and the narrator being seated side by side on the plane, the last a graph of her orgasmic contractions. There are quotations from and references to Plato, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Groucho Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Stendhal, Goethe, Freud, Barthes, and finally Dr Peggy Nearly, a Californian psychoanalyst whose do-it-yourself manual, The Bleeding Heart, was published in 1987. Botton invents a consultation between Dr Nearly and Madame Bovary in which the good doctor urges Flaubert’s heroine to choose more suitable lovers and to make an effort to look after yourself, to go over your childhood, then perhaps you’ll learn that you don’t deserve all this pain. It’s only because you grew up in a dysfunctional family.

Emma isn’t interested: she just wants Rudolph back; and for the third week running she hasn’t got the money for Dr Nearly’s fee.

The narrator’s self-analysis throughout the book is a lot more subtle than Dr Nearly’s offerings, and he develops it in to magisterial generalisations. The result is something like La Rochefoucauld’s maxims crossed with Adolphe, with jokes and against a background of luggage reclaim areas and breakfast cereal packets. The narrator writes his suicide note at the kitchen table ‘with only the shivering of the fridge for company’. The desolation of it! Ingeniously pinpointed mundane details stop the novel from getting too abstract. It is witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights. With so many illustrious names dropped, it is difficult to tell whether the insights are original or not: but they are certainly organised into a very entertaining read. For people who mind about that kind of thing, Essays in Love is also quite unusually optimistic.

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Essays In Love Paperback – Abridged, 20 January 2006

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• Print length 224 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Picador
• Publication date 20 January 2006
• Reading age 18 years and up
• Dimensions 12.8 x 1.5 x 19.7 cm
• ISBN-10 0330440780
• ISBN-13 978-0330440783
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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Abridged edition (20 January 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0330440780
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0330440783
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 168 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.8 x 1.5 x 19.7 cm

About the author

Alain de botton.

Alain de Botton is the author of Essays in Love (1993), The Romantic Movement (1994), Kiss and Tell (1995), How Proust can Change your Life (1997), The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) The Art of Travel (2002), Status Anxiety (2004) and most recently, The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

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The Course of Love review – philosophy overload

Alain de Botton ’s first novel in 23 years – his quirky, autobiographical debut, Essays in Love , was written when he was just 23 – again takes love as its theme. Like its predecessor, it explores the myths and minutiae of courtship and relationships. It charts a couple’s marriage from the first flowering of attraction and the glow of the proposal to the everyday business of life as husband and wife. It maps the small shifts in their sex life and explores the way in which habits and behaviour which once endeared them to one another become sources of irritation and frustration.

Rabih and Kirsten’s story is an intentionally ordinary one. They meet, they fall in love, they marry, they encounter small obstacles in their personal and professional lives, they have children. One of them is unfaithful. The marriage strains but does not crack.

While the book is being promoted as a novel rather than a work of philosophy, De Botton’s interests as an essayist, in work, sex, happiness, in how we live and what we live for, are still very much to the fore. The narrative is intercut with a series of italicised interjections, unpicking the couple’s motivations and impulses, dissecting their decisions. For example: “Nature imbeds in us insistent dreams of success”; and “The accusations we direct at our lovers make no particular sense. We would utter such unfair things to no one else on earth.”

The contrast between these passages and the world of the characters makes for some appealing juxtapositions. Sometimes the observations are acute and telling – De Botton is good on the politics of laundry, the compromise of domesticity – but there’s an insistence on universality that borders on the smug.

He lays out his thesis, that society builds in us the expectation that our stories will play out in certain ways, that it’s healthy and necessary to document disappointment and disillusionment, that so much of the tension in a marriage is self-generated, a product of the gulf between the life people feel they should be living and the life they are living.

The Course of Love is at its strongest when De Botton steps back and allows the couple to breathe. There’s a lot of truth and humour in his account of the earliest days of their marriage as he highlights the intricate web of pressures, both self-imposed and external, that lead them to make certain choices. Rabih loves Kirsten, but he’s also tired of a life alone. They marry, in part, because they feel it is time to marry, that they are in the marrying stage of their lives, and in the beginning, for both of them, marriage is a kind of performance: they are both playing roles, the choices they make shaped as much by their own emotions as by their family histories, their upbringings, the city in which they live, and the paths their peers are going down.

While Rabih and Kirsten’s story is always engaging and there’s an ease and believability to them as a couple, the outside voice comes to feel grating and intrusive after a while, in its pronouncements and the narrowness of its outlook, in its continual desire to pin down the mess and complexity of the human experience, to bind it and box it.

The Course of Love is published by Hamish Hamilton (£14.99). Click here to buy it for £11.99

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Tiny Love Stories: ‘The One-Liners Kept Coming’

Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.

A Final Catchphrase

“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Coke today.” The last words my father said to me. I had just brought him a Coke, fulfilling a raspy request from his deathbed. At first, I thought his offer was gibberish spurting from his rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease. When I told my mom, she immediately understood — he was riffing on Wimpy’s catchphrase from the “Popeye” cartoon. In those final days, the one-liners kept coming: Could I get him anything? A winning lottery ticket. Anyone he wanted to see? Bob Dylan. He didn’t make it to Tuesday, but his debt had been repaid. — Susannah Clark Matt

Breaking From Expectation

Our love story sounds straightforward: Meet at a Bible study in rural Missouri, fall in love on a service trip and marry after college graduation. The plot twist? We’re both women. Before we met, Alison and I had exclusively dated men. Our relationship moved quickly from friendship to love, so many around us thought it was a passing fling. We faced a mountain of skepticism from religious family members, but it melted into understanding over time. Now, 15 years and a child later, we choose each other time and again. To us, that’s the definition of a happy ending. — Sarah Shebek

Baby Gladys

“It’s not just a car!” our 7-year-old daughter, Addie, wailed from inside her room. “It’s Baby Gladys.” No one could remember how our car got its name, but Addie had ridden in its cluttered back seat since she was a baby. She had laughed, cried and shared the types of inner thoughts that are easier to say aloud when you’re peering out a window. She had created inside jokes and imaginary worlds with her brother that no one else understood. When we traded it in, she left a note inside the glove compartment: “Please take good care of Baby Gladys.” — Genevieve Quist Green

Fully Stocked

My mother kept saying, “I haven’t done enough for you.” I kept telling her that traveling from West Virginia for over a week was plenty. The exchanges took place while she was preparing me food — a peanut butter sandwich, masala chai, my favorite lamb curry — in my tiny deathtrap of a New York studio kitchen. I had just had surgery, and although not rendered helpless, daily chores and cooking weren’t possible. When she left, I still had aches and pains. However, my biggest dilemma was ensuring the contents of my now well-stocked freezer didn’t pour out at each opening. — Anupama Chakravartti

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Opinion It’s not so ‘terribly strange to be 70’

I turned 70 today, a young age for an older person to be, but it is the oldest I have ever been by a long shot. It has been well over six decades since I learned in arithmetic how to carry the one, and the rest has sped by like microfiche.

One big juicy, messy, hard, joyful, quiet life. That’s what my 70 years have bequeathed me.

In my teens, already drinking and drugging, I didn’t expect to see 21, and at 21, out of control, I didn’t expect to see 30. At 30, I had published three books but, as a sober friend put it, was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.

Then at 32, I got clean and sober, the miracle of my life from which all other blessings flow. My son was born three years later. The apple fell close to the tree: My son went off the rails, too. He and his partner had a baby at 19, which had not been in my specific plans for him, but you know the old line: If you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans.

The baby, soon to get his learner’s permit, turned out to be the gift of a lifetime. My son got clean and sober 13 years ago, and the three of us grew up together. Then after a long search, I met this brilliant, kind writer guy and, three days after I started getting Social Security, I married him. Yesterday, I published my 20th book, called “Somehow.” Today, when I woke up, I was 70. Seventy!

I think that I am only 57, but the paperwork does not back this up. I don’t feel old, because your inside self doesn’t age. When younger people ask me when I graduated from high school and I say 1971, there’s a moment’s pause, as if this is inconceivable and I might as well have said 20 B.C. That’s when I feel my age. But I smile winsomely because, while I would like to have their skin, hearing, vision, memory, balance, stamina and focus, I would not go back even one year.

My older friends and I know a thing or two.

In general, though, I know how little I know. This is a big relief.

I know that my lifelong belief, that to be beyond reproach offers shelter and protection, is a lie. Shelter is an inside job, protection an illusion. We are as vulnerable as kittens. Love fends off the worst of it.

I know now that everyone is screwed up to some degree, and that everyone screws up. Phew. I thought for decades it was just me, that all of you had been issued owner’s manuals in second grade, the day I was home with measles. We are all figuring it out as we go. Aging is grad school.

I know a very little bit about God, or goodness, or good orderly direction. I am a believer, but I don’t trouble myself about ultimate reality, the triune nature of the deity or who shot the Holy Ghost. I say help a lot, and thanks, and are You kidding me??? Have You been drinking again, Friend?

I know about something I will call cloak hope, most obvious to me in the people who swooped in and helped me get sober in 1986, and swooped down again in 2012 for my child. In my case, an elderly sober woman named Ruby saw me in my utter, trembly hopelessness — afraid, smelly and arrogant; she swept in and took me under her wing. She wrapped her cloak around me and was the counternarrative to all I believed at 32, i.e., that I needed to figure things out, especially myself, and who to blame.

I know the beauty of shadows. Shadows show us how life can gleam in contrast. Sunshine might be dancing outside the window, but the wonder is in the variegation, with fat white clouds bunched up on the right casting shadows on the hills and gardens, and brushstrokes of gray clouds on the left and — most magical — the long narrow shawl of fog right across the top of the ridge. The day is saying, Who knows how the weather will morph, but meanwhile so much is possible. And that is life asserting itself.

I know life will assert itself. Knowing this means I have a shot at some measure of pliability, like a willow tree that is maybe having an iffy day.

I know everything is in flux, that all things will turn into other things. I am uncomfortable with this but less so than in younger years. Michael Pollan wrote, “Look into a flower, and what do you see? Into the very heart of nature’s double nature — that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spiring toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it.” So I don’t sweat feeling a little disoriented some days.

I have grown mostly unafraid of my own death, except late at night when I head to WebMD and learn that my symptoms are probably cancer.

I know and am constantly aware of how much we have all lost and are in danger of losing — I am not going to name names — and am awash with gratitude for lovely, funny things that are still here and still work.

I know how to let go now, mostly, although it is not a lovely Hallmark process, and when well-wishers from my spiritual community exhort me to let go and let God, I want to Taser them. But I know that when I finally tell a best friend of my thistly stuckness, the telling is the beginning of release. You have to learn to let go. Otherwise, you get dragged, or you become George Costanza’s father pounding the table and shouting, “Serenity now!”

I know that people and pets I adore will keep dying, and it will never be okay, and then it will, sort of, mostly. I know the cycle is life, death, new life, and I think this is a bad system, but it is the one currently in place.

I know I will space out and screw up right and left as I head out on this book tour, say things I wish I could take back, forget things, sometimes onstage, and lose things. I just will.

I recently went to Costa Rica, where my husband was giving a spiritual retreat, and I forgot my pants. My pants! And last month, I went to give a talk at a theater two states away and forgot to bring any makeup. I am quite pale, almost light blue in some places — think of someone from “Game of Thrones” with a head cold — and ghostly under bright lights. When I discovered this omission, I was wearing only tinted moisturizer, powder on my nose and light pink lip gloss.

I gave myself an inspiring pep talk on my inner beauty, the light within. And then I had a moment of clarity: I asked the person driving me to the venue to stop at CVS, where I bought blush and a lipstick that was accidentally brighter and glossier than I usually wear. I looked fabulous. Age is just a number when you still know how to shine. And I shone.

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