True Love

I want to talk about love.

Because, as I write this, it's Valentines Evening.

And because the man next door is this moment standing on the sidewalk serenading his lady inside - or else he is not feeling well, having had too much to drink.

Because, for better or worse, on key and off, love is in the air.

And because I've been in love with one man long enough to know what love looks like, and to know that most movies and most books get it wrong. You may know this too. I hope my neighbor knows.

Tolkien certainly did:

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to Michael Tolkien, March 1941

On this day after Valentines, I'd like you to write a caption to tell me something true about love, something the books and movies don't divulge. I've provided some pictures for inspiration from my Pinterest board, Pictures That Want To Be Stories.

And I've done the first one to get the ball rolling:

1.

A thousand things could be true of him that moment. And if they could progress past the moment to a kiss and then to years, and then to a silver anniversary, then those thousand things would taper to seven or eight or fifteen things that were true of him, and they would be the same old things, and the seven or eight things about her would become old as well. And then the mystery and possibility would be replaced with what? With that un-named something that she saw between women with whiskers and men with breasts?
She beckoned him in. 

Sorry folks. I'm tired tonight. But please see what you can do with this picture or any of the others.

We love to read what you have to say.

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Love Story or Romance?

 

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, I thought we might take a look at some favorite love stories.  I’ve compiled a short list containing books that don’t fall into the romance genre, but have strong romantic elements.

Gone with the Wind

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

Rebecca

The Princess Bride

The Time-Traveler’s Wife

Persuasion

Wuthering Heights

Little Women

The Painted Veil

Snow Falling on Cedars

Le Morte de Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Roundtable

Anne of Avonlea

It’s just a partial list and I know you could add some fabulous choices of your own.

These stories are more than romance but would not be the same stories without it.  Emotional tension weaves through the plot - the kind of tension with which we can all identify.  It moves the story along, raising the stakes.  People, society, misunderstandings and forces of nature conspire against the lovers and threaten to keep them apart.  

I recently read an article that declared Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre to be romances, but Gone With the Wind and Romeo and Juliet to be love stories.  The difference was in the endings. Romances have emotionally satisfying and optimistic endings, but love stories do not. The characters may not end up together in a ‘happy ever after,’ but we are given to believe that their love is declared in a way that eternally binds them, and for certain stories, that’s enough.

I’m not against the optimistic ending, but sometimes a love story is called for. Which do you prefer and why, or would you like to add a book to the list? We’d love to hear from you.

The Great Romance

I've really enjoyed the discussion about romance we've had since Patti's post last Friday started us on the topic. I loved the clip she posted from You've Got Mail, which is high on my list of movie favorites. I love all the comments generated by the posts of the past week, and have added titles to both my reading and movie-watching lists.

To conclude the discussion, at least for now, I'm posting a book review of one of my truly favorite movels about romance. Actually, it's a trilogy I'm reviewing: Black, Red & White by Ted Dekker. The trilogy is speculative fiction, a thriller/fantasy, so why in the world would I promote it as romance? I'll get to that.

For those who haven't read The Circle trilogy, I'll tell you what the back cover copy says about each one.  Black: The Birth of Evil. "Black is an incredible story of evil and rescue, betrayal and love, pursuit and death, and a terrorist's threat unlike anything the human race has ever known. A virulent evil has been unleashed upon the people of the earth, an unstoppable force bent on the destruction of all that is good. Only Thomas Hunter can stop it, and he has been killed. Twice."

Well, I was already quite a fan of Ted Dekker's writing, but when I read that back cover copy I knew Black was a must-read for me. I'm sure I read the opening pages three or four times and still couldn't figure out what was happening. It was my faith in Ted that kept me going, because I knew when the confusion cleared up it would be so worth it. But that's not entirely true. I'd have kept reading regardless, because the story didn't just draw me in, it sucked me in. I had to keep reading.

I had the privilege of seeing Ted Dekker as the keynote speaker at Mount Herman Christian Writer's Conference a few years ago. What he spoke about bolstered my determination to not give up on my dream of publication. He said the world of writing is like a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid you have a large number of people who want to be published. Move up the pyramid a bit and there will be a smaller number of people who will actually write to be published (a little author humor there). Move closer to the top of the pyramid and you have a much smaller number of people who will hone their craft and persevere until they are published. I left that conference knowing I was going to persevere until I realized my dream or died trying.

I read Black -- devoured it is more like it -- then had to wait several months for Red to be released, and several more months for White. The upside was that I read Black a second time just before Red came out, and read Red a second time just before White came out. Then I read White a second time ... um ... to keep things in balance.

Here's the back cover copy for Red and White:

Red: The Great Pursuit. "The mind-bending pace of Black accelerates in Red, Book Two of Ted Dekker's ground-breaking Circle trilogy. Less than a month ago, Thomas Hunter was a failed writer selling coffee at the Java Hut in Denver. Now he finds himself in a desperate quest to rescue two worlds from collapse. In one world, he's a battle-scarred general commanding an army of primitive warriors. In the other, he's racing to outwit sadistic terrorists intent on creating global chaos through an unstoppable virus. Two worlds on the brink of destruction. One unthinkable solution. Enter an adrenaline-laced epic where dreams and reality collide. Nothing is as it seems, as Black turns to Red."

White: The Great Pursuit. "Thomas Hunter has only days to survive two separate realms of danger, deceit and destruction. The fate of both worlds hinges on his unique ability to shift realities through his dreams. Now leading a small ragtag group known as The Circle, Thomas finds himself facing new enemies, never-ending challenges, and the forbidden love of a most unlikely woman. Enter the Great Pursuit, where Thomas and a small band of followers must decide quickly who they can trust -- both with their own lives and the fate of millions. Dreams and reality quickly bleed into each other as time runs out. And neither the terror of Black nor the treachery of Red can prepare Thomas for the forces aligned against The Circle in White."

So again, what does that really have to do with romance? Well, just as the incomparable Lord of the Rings trilogy is, to my mind, the best Christian allegory ever written (I know, the debate continues over whether Lord of the Rings is an allegory at all. To me, it is) so too The Circle trilogy is a thrilling allegory about the love of God. In the trilogy it's referred to as the Great Romance. My family (all of whom read and loved the trilogy) and I fall back on that phrase on a regular basis. It's a succinct way to remind ourselves and each other of the deep, abiding, unquenchable love of God. As the story so beautifully drives home, "From the beginning it was always about the Great Romance."

What book(s) can you think of that at first glance would never fall into the Romance category, but when you get to the heart of it, it's about little else?