Book info

• Title The Lover's Dictionary
• Author David Levithan
• Year 2011
• Genre Romance

How does one talk about love? Do we even have the right words to describe something that can be both utterly mundane and completely transcendent, pulling us out of our everyday lives and making us feel a part of something greater than ourselves? Taking a unique approach to this problem, the nameless narrator of David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary has constructed the story of his relationship as a dictionary. Through these short entries, he provides an intimate window into the great events and quotidian trifles of being within a couple, giving us an indelible and deeply moving portrait of love in our time.

Thoughts

A unique take on a love story, this book travels through the alphabet, giving snapshots of a relationship in one or two sentences. Each is associated to a word from the dictionary, but really, it’s not the words that matter. It’s the glimpses of another life, in a totally random order, that are the real fascination.

It’s barely a story, not quite a memoir either. It feels almost like reading an extended creative writing exercise, whilst at the same time getting a sometimes painful insight into this relationship of two people struggling to be together.

I liked it, I devoured it very quickly, but it wasn’t all that satisfying really - don’t go into it with the expectation of getting a full picture, it’s more like peering through frosted glass instead.

Rating: 3 / 5