{"id":4937,"date":"2020-01-12T09:02:45","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T15:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=4937"},"modified":"2020-01-12T09:02:45","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T15:02:45","slug":"book-clinic-recommends-romantic-reads-like-updikes-couples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2020\/01\/12\/book-clinic-recommends-romantic-reads-like-updikes-couples\/","title":{"rendered":"Book clinic recommends romantic reads, like Updike’s Couples"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Observer<\/em>‘s Book critic, Kate Kellaway<\/strong>, was asked to recommend “some good romantic novels that are not cliched,” and she responded,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“Your question makes me think about what it is to be cliched\u2014if only because you might argue that love is the greatest and most necessary of cliches, and if you steer too far from the heart’s core in literature, romance sometimes retreats. . . .<\/p>\n

“I imagine you are not insisting that ‘romantic’ involves a happy ending? John Updike’s Couples<\/em> is full of torment but an addictive read\u2014as is D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love<\/em>. Nabokov’s Lolita<\/em> about the doomed love between an older man and a ‘nymphet’\u2014is a sullied romance. Marguerite Duras’s The Lover<\/em> is erotic (are romance and eroticism permitted, momentarily, to be interchangeable?).<\/p>\n

“Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera\u00a0<\/em>is gorgeously sensual. For those seeking gay romance, Andr\u00e9 Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name<\/em>, John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies<\/em> and What Belongs to You<\/em> by Garth Greenwell are winners (the last particularly elegaic and passionate). Also worth adding is Sally Rooney’s smash hit Conversations with Friends<\/em>\u2014balanced between sophistication and naivety; Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn’s superb Brooklyn<\/em>\u2014exploring love when geography is not on its side; and Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday<\/em>\u2014a beautiful novel about a Jane who does not share Jane Eyre’s good luck.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Observer‘s Book critic, Kate Kellaway, was asked to recommend “some good romantic novels that are not cliched,” and she responded, “Your question makes me think about what it is to be cliched\u2014if only because you might argue that love … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4938,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions\/4938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}