Love reading? Kiran Dass has plenty of suggestions. Photo / 123rf
Love reading? Kiran Dass has plenty of suggestions. Photo / 123rf
FRIENDSHIP LOVE
Just Kids by Patti Smith (Bloomsbury, $35)
Just Kids.
Before photographer Robert Mapplethorpe died in 1989 due to complications from Aids/HIV, his best friend, the poet, writer and punk musician Patti Smith, promised him she would write a book that told their story. Just Kids went on to win the National BookAward for non-fiction in 2010 and remains one of the most spellbinding tributes to the particular love of enduring friendship. Both had separately fled to New York City penniless but full of inspiration to immerse themselves in the heady epicentre of the 1960s and 70s counterculture. After a chance meeting, the pair fell deeply in love, became lovers, then best friends and collaborators when Mapplethorpe came out as gay. This evocative book is full of love and art, captures the thrill of New York's avant-garde, and is a beautiful tribute to friendship.
In the City of Love's Sleep by Lavinia Greenlaw (Faber, $37)
In the City of Love's Sleep.
An exquisite look at love in middle age, this is also an elegant novel about people, objects and repair. Iris is a museum conservator and Raif an academic. After a chance encounter there is an immense gravitational pull between the two. Raif is grief-stricken after the death of his wife, while Iris is separated from her husband who has degenerative multiple sclerosis. Meeting each other electrifies something that has been frozen inside both of them, and they discover that love is something that can just happen, even when you are not actively seeking it. This is a poised novel that beautifully examines relationships, the magnetic pull of chemistry that can occur between people, and the transformative powers of love. Lavinia Greenlaw's luminous writing is something to luxuriate in.
AFFAIRS/BOOKS IN TRANSLATION
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux (Fitzcarraldo Editions, $32)
Simple Passion.
Recently adapted into a film directed by Danielle Arbid and reprinted by Fitzcarraldo
Editions in 2021, French writer Annie Ernaux's 1991 auto-fictional memoir Simple Passion (translated by Tanya Leslie) is crisp and succinct at a mere 48 pages. Slender and spare but radiating the heat of erotic obsession with sensitivity and sharp observation, this is a shimmering book that examines the emotional landscape of the human heart. With a precise delicacy, Ernaux documents a roller coaster two-year relationship between a single woman with two grown-up sons and a married businessman from Eastern Europe on temporary assignment in Paris. Ernaux succinctly evokes desire, anxiety, exhaustion, dead ends and obsession. Courageous and with a shattering clarity, Ernaux writes with a piercing wisdom. Read anything by her you can get your hands on.
LOVE STORIES
My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (HarperCollins, $28)
Spiky spinsters, philandering husbands and lovestruck sweethearts come together in this eclectic collection of short love stories spanning the classic to the contemporary. A diverse collection perfect for dipping in and out of, it would make a lovely gift. The differing multiple facets of love from the romantic, complex, painful, erotic, ecstatic and doomed are explored in these stories by celebrated writers including Alice Munro, William Faulkner, Miranda July, Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver. I once worked in a bookshop where this handsome collection would go in our Valentine's Day display every year and it was always one of the first books to be snapped up.
QUEER NZ LOVE/YOUNG LOVE/FAMILY LOVE
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
Greta & Valdin
A longlisted title at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, I reckon Rebecca K. Reilly's debut novel is a strong contender not just for the Best First Book Award but the major Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. The love in this book is double-barrelled - it's a queer romance but also explores love within a warm and close family, the father Linsh observes, "We're all strange, romantic, emotional people." Valdin is heartsick because his older lover has taken off with someone else in Buenos Aires, and Greta briefly has a crush on a shallow work-friend who has a new girlfriend. Relationships, sexual politics, gender and family secrets and dynamics are all beautifully explored. Moving, wise and funny, Greta & Valdin is full of humour and heart. Give it to your crush.
NON FICTION/ESSAYS
Conversations On Love by Natasha Lunn (Viking, $40)
Conversations on Love.
Journalist Natasha Lunn thoughtfully examines love in its many forms from romantic to platonic and parental, and looks at how relationships evolve over time. In this anthology, Lunn shares her own experiences and invites authors and experts to contribute personal anecdotes and commentary about love. With a stunning roll call of contributors, Conversations on Love includes Dolly Alderton on vulnerability, psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz on accepting change, Alain de Botton on the psychology of being alone, Roxane Gay on redefining romance and Lisa Taddeo on the loneliness of loss. Similar in tone to Elizabeth Day's How to Fail, this book would be perfect for fans of that podcast.
