Review: "Love, In Theory" by E.J. Levy

Title: Love, In Theory
Author: E.J. Levy
Publisher: The University of Georgia Press
Date Published: September 15, 2012
Pages: 224

How I Heard About It: The wonderful women of TLC Book Tours.

Two Sentence Summary:  In ten short stories, E.J. Levy's complicated characters explore love and its many [per]mutations over time.  Each piece is exploration within a new frame, guided by a shifting intellectual lens and also by the characters' quirky interests-made-metaphor: expensive woven rugs, creative writing prompts, philosophy courses.

"Desire confounds categories." (pg 69)

Things I Think: This book was challenging for me because of the immediate breadth of topic that lives in the title. Calling a book (essentially) "LOVE" is quite a tall order, and (unless it is magnificently executed) a potentially fatal misstep for an artist.  So I approached warily.  

The first story ("The Best Way Not to Freeze") employed a metaphor that made my writerly self shudder: a shattered plate glued back together, with obligatory reference to the irreparable cracks.  I felt (and still feel) shocked that this egregious cliche cropped up so immediately, because as I forged on, Levy's writing overflowed with unique imagery and beautifully crafted sentences. 

"Did you hear it?" he asked.

"Someone screaming?"

"Night hawk," he said.

"In the city?"

"They nest on rooftops and cliffs."

She still wonders if he wasn't mistaken, if the sound wasn't a seagull or someone being mugged, which in his longing Gil mistook for something rare and loved and absent. (pg 43)

author E.J. Levy

So many of Levy's images have stayed with me: an apartment overtaken by oriental rugs; index cards carrying secrets and regret, floating whitely down a highway at night; hypothermia survival tips arbitrarily tacked to a suburban fridge. While the basic situations are not unfamiliar (cheating spouses, abandonment by a lover, etc.) the characters are so infused with life and legitimacy.  It is from them that the book gains its gusto. 

There is a brisk trade in divination these days - astrological columns, palm readings - people seem less interested in preparatory contemplation than in foreknowledge, which seems to me to have it backward.

After all, what good is knowing what's to come if you're ill prepared to cope with it? (page 62)