On the Shelf

I don't like to read past the first few sentences of book jackets. I find the summaries frustrating, usually giving away far too much of plot of a book. In a slow book, one hundred pages into a story I wonder why I have bothered reading something that was eloquently summed up in a short paragraph on the back of a book. I like to see characters outlined in the way the author set out to do it, which in most cases is slowly.

I like the idea of a character to be exposed in pieces, like peeling back layers of an onion. Chapter one you meet Joe, chapter three you find out he lives alone, chapter five you find he is widower, chapter seven you discover his addiction, etc. Rather than the dust jacket which is likely to say; "Recently widowed, Joe lives alone, struggling with alcoholism." This is why when I picked up Love is a Four-Letter Word, I didn't really pick up on the theme of the short stories. I didn't read beyond the first few sentences in the jacket synopsis.

I knew the idea of the book was supposed to be love told from the other side. However, I didn't realize that all the first person narratives were going to take one of two veins. Either they would focus on a significant other who turns out to be a complete asshole and hurts the author or the narrator would be the one inflicting the hurt on their lover. I had picked Love is a Four-Letter Word thinking that some stories would be ultimately be redeeming, but this was not the case. In the end the reason I had picked up the book, focusing on the word love is what I walked away not wanting. I would only recommend picking up this book if you want to feel that nothing will ever quite work out.