Comments on: Books about unrequited love?

Question: Books about unrequited love?

dobbs — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 00:48:27 -0800

I've just finished both David Gilmour's Sparrow Nights and Scott Spencer's Endless Love, each for the second time. They're even better than I remember them. What's your favorite book about unrequited love? I'd like to keep up the streak.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 05:00:31 -0800

They're not exactly about unrequited love, but Talking it Over and Love Etc by Julian Barnes are suitably obsessive.

Endless Love really is a great book.

By: jeremias

jeremias — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 06:20:50 -0800

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is a classic. It's a bit more complex than unrequited love but it's definitely a big part of it. It's very readable.

By: Hartster

Hartster — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:39:43 -0800

Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin. A genuinely great book that transposes a history of 1930s surrealism, the second world war and one man's all-consuming romantic obsession. A book so good that even thinking about it makes me want to hug myself.

By: crush-onastick

crush-onastick — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:46:07 -0800

love in the time of cholera and of human bondage.

i'd also throw gone with the wind in there, just because.

By: Capn

Capn — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:54:02 -0800

Gödel Escher, Bach

What? Oh, fine then, Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:09:44 -0800

Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:35:03 -0800

As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem. Assuming you don't mind some physics in your love story.

By: plexi

plexi — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:51:28 -0800

Eugénie Grandet, Balzac

By: batboy

batboy — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 09:29:13 -0800

Art and Lies, Jeanette Winterson

By: sad_otter

sad_otter — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 09:42:22 -0800

The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers. It's also about genetics and pianos.

By: JanetLand

JanetLand — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 15:06:53 -0800

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. (Made into a not particularly good movie a few years ago.)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 16:00:39 -0800

i'll second Love in the Time of Cholera, and Ground Beneath Her Feet.

And i'll throw in The Notorious Dr. August by Christopher Bram

By: Gortuk

Gortuk — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 16:30:12 -0800

JP Donleavy, A Singular Man.

By: 111

111 — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 16:40:17 -0800

Not a favorite at all (actually I loathed it), but Powers' "Galatea 2.2" may address your needs.

ps: those who say Love in the Time of Cholera is about "unrequited" love have probably not finished the novel.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 16:40:44 -0800

The Gold Bug Variations is one of my top ten all time books. It has a smartie librarian in it. Also, for a sort of unrequited-anything feel to it, I suggest The Lovely Bones by Alice Seybold. Sad, poignant and gripping, it's narrated almost entirely by a young girl who is murdered in the first few pages of the book. She spends the next few decades watching her family age and grow and disintegrate, and she spies on the first boy she ever kissed who in some strange way she never quite gets over.

By: Khalad

Khalad — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 16:46:34 -0800

Wuthering Heights is exquisitely painful.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 20:16:17 -0800

Thanks, all!