This reading list features seven books that strike a similar balance-each telling its own version of what it means to fall in and out of love in the British capital. Toeing the line between commercial and literary fiction, Adelaide, like London, hopefully balances light with dark-something so many brilliant writers, and their London-based novels, have done before. Set in London, it details the rise and fall of a torrid and toxic relationship between the titular Adelaide Williams and a foppish-haired, emotionally unavailable Englishman named Rory Hughes-a relationship Adelaide eventually (and somewhat disastrously) exits, choosing instead to put herself first.
It’s a balance I’d like to think my own novel, Adelaide, has struck.
They capture the beauty of falling in love, of course, but they also capture the reclaimed power that comes-sometimes-with falling out of it. Sure, some feature the type of happily-ever-after in which the music swells and crescendos at the end but, like its own identity and character, the majority of London’s love stories are constructed from a combination of toughness and tenderness, of joy and complications. And its greatest love stories often walk a similar tightrope. Not quite as romantic as Paris, nor as hustle-and-bustle-y as New York, London sits somewhere in the middle, a charming city with grit, a gritty city with charm.
0 kommentar(er)
