Maggie Wills ’25
Staff Writer
As Valentine’s Day approaches, it’s the perfect time to celebrate all forms of love in our lives. According to Rabbi David Wolpe of Time Magazine, love is “a feeling that expresses itself in action.” This feeling manifests itself not just in romantic partners, but also in relationships between friends and family. As argued by Madeleine Dore of ABC Everyday, the love between families and communities are just as important as romantic love, despite the weight that society puts on romantic relationships.
Celebrate this month with new books highlighting modern interpretations of love in all forms.
Photo courtesy of Chris Boland
“Beautiful World, Where Are You” by Sally Rooney
Published Sept. 7, 2021
“Beautiful World, Where Are You” tells the story of two friends, Alice, a novelist grappling with sudden widespread success and teetering mental health, and her best friend Eileen, who is questioning the success of her own career and social life. Love and relationships, despite the hardships of the modern world, are the central themes of this novel. Both Alice and Eileen navigate jobs, budding romantic relationships and an imminent fear of the future while maintaining their long-standing friendship. Through these moments of doubt, their friendship serves as an escape from real life. Their love is the central theme of this novel, which features email exchanges between the two friends. As the backdrop to this story, the book also discusses climate change and world politics.
According to The New York Times, Alice’s character, a fellow contemporary novelist, is inspired by Rooney. In the time of writing “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” she was also attempting to understand her rising literary fame and the role of fiction and superfluous novels in a world filled with so much turmoil.
Rooney is also the author of “Conversations with Friends” and “Normal People.” Her novel “Normal People” was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018
“Fiona and Jane” by Jean Chen Ho
Published Jan. 4, 2022
This newly released collection of stories follows two Taiwanese girls coming of age over multiple decades. The stories alternate between the perspectives of the ambitious Fiona and the more introverted Jane, beginning with their childhoods in Los Angeles. Their relationship grows distant during their 20s as Fiona strikes out on her own in New York City. Still, their friendship remains a constant in their tumultuous lives. While the book covers themes of sexuality, grief and family, the girls’ friendship stays at the center of it all.
“Fiona and Jane” is Ho’s first book, doubling as her creative writing and literature dissertation from the University of Southern California. Ho shares her Taiwanese heritage and Los Angeles hometown with the heroines of her book, but Fiona and Jane are not inspired by members of Ho’s personal life. With the Los Angeles Times, she shared that she was mainly interested in writing about close-knit friendships between Asian American women in a setting similar to her upbringing.
“How We Love” by Clementine Ford
Published Nov. 2, 2021
From the same author that wrote contemporary feminist books such as “Fight Like a Girl” and “Boys Will Be Boys,” Clementine Ford delivers a memoir-style collection of essays focusing on love in all its iterations. In this collection, Ford chronicles her life of love from childhood to adulthood. While one essay centers on her mother’s death from cancer at 58, another highlights the clumsiness of one’s teenage years. They tackle the pains of a first love lost, the strength of family and the importance of self-compassion. Consistent, however, is the fact that all the essays express how love is imperfect, messy and vital in constructing who we are.
Ford is a former columnist for Daily Life, a branch of Australian multimedia conglomerate Fairfax Media. She is the author of two books centered on feminism and hosts a podcast called “Clementine Ford’s Big Sister Hotline.” She is widely respected in feminist circles for both her bold and satirical writing. Ford told The Guardian that for “How We Love,” she attempted to stray away from the misandrist stereotype assigned to her in light of her first two books and social media presence. Elle Hunt of The Guardian described “How We Love” as sharing the “surprisingly softer, more self-doubting side to Ford.”