As promised, I'm back and this time with a book recommendation/review. I stumbled across one of my old books while cleaning up and decided to reread it. So, let's talk about The Lover's Dictionary.
Source: www.goodreads.com
The Book
The Lover's dictionary is the first novel aimed at adults by David Levithan. It is a love story told entirely through dictionary entries. The entries are arranged alphabetically and therefore in no chronological order. They are, however, linked and tell a quite realistic modern age love story. Each of the entries contains a short comment or scene told from the narrator's point of view.
The Lover's Dictionary is written in the second person. The reader gets adressed with "you", which makes it a lot easier to get absorbed in the story. It also makes it easier for the author to keep the novel gender neutral. Neither the gender of the narrator nor of his/her beloved gets revealed. In the whole book, there is no clear indication for their names, genders, appearances or sexual preferences. It could tell the story of a straight couple as well as two men or women. Which leads me to my next point: Levithan's works usually deal with the topic of sexual identity and homosexuality. He himself admitted to being gay and he is a strong advocate of gay right.
As the books only consists of short, loosely connected entries there are many parts of the story left open. This still leaves a lot for the reader's own imagination. Not to mention that almost everybody can picture themselves as part of the book as there is so little given away about the characters backgrounds.
The Author
David Levithan is a popular American author of young-adult fiction. His most famous work must be Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which was also made into a film, although his other works are mostly well known as well. His books usually revolve around one or more gay characters or he simply does not give away their gender at all.
Most of his books deal with the topic of homosexuality as it concerns him directly. As already stated above, he himself is gay and strongly advocates gay rights. In his books, he usually wants to show the reader that love is just love without regard to anybody's gender. In Every Day for example, the main character is a bodiless being that borrows other peoples' bodies for a day. One day, he/she falls in love with the girlfriend of one of the borrowed bodies. So, he/she tries to find her again every day in that day's body: be it a girl or a boy or anything in between. The message of that book is obviously that true love has no boundaries and knowns no gender, age or appearance.
My Opinion on the Book
I only picked up The Lover's Dictionary because I saw it on a pile of books for sale while browsing a store a while ago. I had already heard of the book before but I hadn't really had the intention to read it. I bought it anyways and was surprised by how good it was. David Levithan actually manages to tell the story of a relationship with many ups and downs while only giving away minimal information about the couple.
I was a bit skeptical in the beginning because telling a story while basically having the reader read between the lines throughout the whole books seems like a really hard task to archive. I can't even be content with what I'm writing and that's just normal prose. So naturally, I had my doubts. It turned out as a positive surprise though. Now, it's one of my favourite books.
The only thing that fools you is the thickness of the book. The Lover's Dictionary is actually a pretty quick read. Sure, it does have over 200 pages, but there is hardly ever more than of the page filled. Sometimes, it's even just a few words.
Source: djamesauthor.blogspot.co.at
If you want to find out more about David Levithan or his work, I'll put some links below.
Click here to get to his website.
This link will lead you to his twitter.
So, I hope you enjoyed today's post. I'm off to bed. Bye!
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