Essays in Love by Alain de Botton

This is a fictional story about two people who meet on a plane and fall in love. Their relationship is dissected throughout - how they fell in love, why they fell in love, their every move and thought process philosophized upon and analyzed. While we all like to think that our own love stories are unique, while how we initially met our partners varies from person to person, the stages of love are all familiar. So the question is, just how unique are we when we all recognize the same physiological and mental processes that take place when we fall in - and out of - love?

The structure of the novel made more sense when I read the afterword from the author. He was only twenty-one when he wrote this book. He said he'd always wanted to write a novel but was also a philosopher and he ended up combining his styles so that he could analyze a fictional couple. While I find he had a lot of insight at such a young age, I found the style both intriguing and annoying. But mostly annoying.

For the most part, I didn't connect very much with the characters and for the main character to have such dramatic reactions at times I found to be a little over-the-top, though I suspect this was done purposely to demonstrate how people are literally overtaken with love.

But what really killed it for me was that while, at the beginning, it was interesting to recognize some of my own reactions reflected in the early heady days of first love, it quickly got old and all of the philosophy and analysis took the fun away. What makes the very beginning of relationships so awesome is that you're not really thinking. You're not always making smart decisions or being rational because you're just so wrapped up in the other person and you're thinking with your heart instead of your head. The more I read, the less engaged I got and just felt like "who cares"...not a feeling you want to have about the main characters of a book.

So, although it was a unique format, it ultimately fell flat for me. I wasn't sad to reach the last page of this book.