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Love, in Theory: Ten Stories

by E.J. Levy (Goodreads Author)

4.1 of 5 stars 4.10 · rating details · 49 ratings · 12 reviews

In this funny, brainy, thoroughly engaging debut collection, an award-winning writer looks at romance through the lens of scholarly theories to illuminate love in the information age.
In ten captivating and tender stories, E. J. Levy takes readers through the surprisingly erotic terrain of the intellect, offering a smart and modern take on the age-old theme of love--whethe...more

Hardcover, 224 pages

Published September 15th 2012 by University of Georgia Press

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Dec 14, 2012 Christina (A Reader of Fictions) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: glbt, favorites-contemps

In the past, I have always avoided short fiction, with the grudging exception of some anthologies with really appealing themes (ex. Zombies vs. Unicorns). Generally, short stories haven't made a whole lot of sense to me, since they tend either to be scrapped ideas that weren't good enough to make into a novel or too short to do a fabulous idea justice. Either I don't want the story at all or I want it to be much longer, a proper novel. Well, I happily report that E. J. Levy's short story collect...more In the past, I have always avoided short fiction, with the grudging exception of some anthologies with really appealing themes (ex. Zombies vs. Unicorns). Generally, short stories haven't made a whole lot of sense to me, since they tend either to be scrapped ideas that weren't good enough to make into a novel or too short to do a fabulous idea justice. Either I don't want the story at all or I want it to be much longer, a proper novel. Well, I happily report that E. J. Levy's short story collection Love, in Theory is precisely what I want short fiction to be.

These ten stories dovetail together nicely, covering a lot of the same ground with slight variations. I love Levy's writing, even in the stories I didn't care for as much. She also makes a lot of fabulous observations with a cynicism and honesty I find quite delightful. I expected this collection of stories about love to be something like a written version of the film Love, Actually, and I suppose it sort of is. However, Levy's stories are all a bit on the melancholy side, lacking the cute couples uniting to make a happy ending, like Love, Actually has, though it actually does have several stories that do not end well.

The last TLC blog tour I participated in was for Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution, a memoir supposedly of love and revolution that follows the romance of two lesbian reporters. I could not help comparing these two, because for all that Before the Rain is non-fiction and Love, in Theory fiction, this short story collection feels infinitely more personal. Having finished this, whether incorrectly or no, I feel I have a sense of who E. J. Levy is, through some of the themes that continually appeared throughout the stories, especially as several of the main characters were writers or worked in academia. In reading this, I felt as though I could sense Levy working through issues she had confronted in her own life or in the lives of close friends and family members. This closeness I felt for the author, whether I'm right or not, made the stories so much more powerful for me.

Over half of the stories focus on well-educated women in their late twenties to early thirties, who struggle with love and romance. These women long for romance, for connection, but, when they find it, the theory of the emotion, the ideal, the dream, does not really seem to fit into their lives. These stories, while they might bore some with the similarity of the heroines, held the most appeal for me, since I cannot help seeing myself reflected in them. Reading about women who have similar reactions and difficulties with romantic relationships to mine was incredibly cathartic.

Another subject that comes up in nearly every story is adultery. If you can't handle stories of infidelity, this collection will not be for you. The adultery comes in just about every form, and, though that's a subject I don't tend to love either, handled quite deftly. This does not seem to have been included for shock value or torridness, but just because that's life; it's a thing that happens and, unfortunately, has to be included in any depiction of love, in the working out of what love really might mean in the face of all of this cheating.

The other most interesting repetition, that again I can't help but stick out to me as perhaps being personal, is that of a lesbian becoming very attracted to a straight man, whether or not she acts on it. Interesting, too, is that the sole gay main character does not question his sexuality, though he does fight against settling down, as almost all of these characters do. The LGBT themes run strongly here, appearing in slightly less than half of the stories.

These stories will not appeal to everyone, but I loved it. A couple of the stories in the middle fell flat for me story-wise, so I couldn't quite rate this five stars. The themes and tone herein remind me a lot of Carol Shields' The Republic of Love, so if you enjoyed that I recommend this heartily, and vice versa.(less)

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Oct 08, 2012 Carrie Ardoin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: tour

This is my first collection of short stories I've ever had to review, so forgive me if this seems a little clunky...I'm not quite sure how to rate the entire book.

Love, in Theory is composed of ten short stories that deal with all kinds of love: new love, old love, husband and wife, mother and daughter.

Some of the stories were very good, while others were less than enthralling. My favorite was "Small Bright Thing", in which both a mother and daughter must face that the other's life is changing.

T...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Audra (Unabridged Chick) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: era-contemporary, favorites, mood-evocative, sapphic, short-stories

You know how when you meet someone, and you immediately decide they're a total snob and you hate their guts, and then you spend more time with them and you realize you were totally wrong and this person is actually wildly cool, and now you've got to backpedal to all your friends about how that person is actually not as awful as you originally said...? Well, that's exactly my experience with this book.

On Friday I blogged about how I was kind of on the fence about this book because there's adulter...more You know how when you meet someone, and you immediately decide they're a total snob and you hate their guts, and then you spend more time with them and you realize you were totally wrong and this person is actually wildly cool, and now you've got to backpedal to all your friends about how that person is actually not as awful as you originally said...? Well, that's exactly my experience with this book.

On Friday I blogged about how I was kind of on the fence about this book because there's adultery and a lesbian who falls for a married man, and I definitely had my eyeballs rolling as I opened the first page. Ooops.

I loved this collection. (Not in theory, either, but for real.)

Every story was like, I don't know, something delectable and redolent. Be it a piece of chocolate or a slice of cake or a gorgeous aria -- Levy's writing sucked me in from the first line and I wanted to savor her stories, linger with them.

The characters felt real, immediately, their emotional state familiar and resonant, and their challenges and conflicts achingly, uncomfortably articulated. In the much feared 'Theory of Dramatic Action', with the lesbian and married man, I found a character I could relate to and understand, and a poignant situation that made me tear up a little. The volume's opening story, 'The Best Way Not to Freeze', about a woman's first real love, was so good I read it twice, then read it to my wife, then to a friend. After that, when I started reading 'The Three Christs of Moose Lake, Minnesota' to my wife, she just took the volume from my hands to inhale on her own. (I raced through this book in one night, then reread almost all the stories over the following two days.)

I have to stop saying I dislike short fiction because clearly, I do like it. These snapshots of relationships, of people, of emotional landscapes are as satisfying as a chunky novel. Maybe more so -- they're like the first bite of a fabulous meal. You want the taste to linger, but it disappears. The next story, the next bite, is just as intriguing. The only perk is, after glutting myself on Levy's book, I still wanted more. (less)

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Sep 20, 2012 Natalie E. Ramm rated it 5 of 5 stars

Love, In Theory is a literary collection of ten short stories about how love works. Levy touches on all kinds of relationships: married, unmarried, heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, older couples, younger couples. All of the stories have a running theme of infidelity (except perhaps the first one).

Levy’s characters attempt to figure out what infidelity means in today’s world. Is it really wrong? Can you still love your partner even if you aren’t monogamous? She hits on a lot of the same que...more Love, In Theory is a literary collection of ten short stories about how love works. Levy touches on all kinds of relationships: married, unmarried, heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, older couples, younger couples. All of the stories have a running theme of infidelity (except perhaps the first one).

Levy’s characters attempt to figure out what infidelity means in today’s world. Is it really wrong? Can you still love your partner even if you aren’t monogamous? She hits on a lot of the same questions as books like The Unbearable Lightness of Being (which I think must have inspired some of these stories. There is even a line in the last story about how lightness can feel so heavy and I was like OK, Milan Kundera).

Her characters are smart and insightful and a little lost. Many of them feel disconnected in some way. Maybe they are broken, or maybe they know what they don’t want but not what they do want. At some point in your life you have probably also felt this way. I know I have! I actually just wrote a story for my creative fiction class (I’m takin’ a fiction class, y’all) about it. The brilliant part is that her characters aren’t melodramatic even though they are depressive, which is a fine line to draw.

Let me give you an example of the best comparison that I’ve read in a really long time. My mouth was open in awe and I wanted to clap. At the end of the first story (my favorite story!), the main character has just lost the first man she has ever really loved and she compares it to a time when she climbed a rock wall. Once she got high enough, she freaked out and froze up. She was calling for help for a long time before anyone came to save her. And even though she knew they were coming and that she was going to be OK eventually, she couldn’t help but be terrified and feel totally alone in the meantime. Man, can Levy craft an ending!

E.J. Levy’s style is very simple but packs a lot of meaning. Her stories taught me so much about writing. We are learning about a bunch of different writing techniques in class, and she made them come alive and make sense.

I LOVED these stories! I find questions about marriage and monogamy fascinating because, although I love romance novels, I’m a little skeptical of the kind of big love that is portrayed in them. That said, Love, In Theory can be rough for an optimist to handle. I found myself wishing the stories were more hopeful. I was expecting literary romance stories, but got something different (and possibly better?). Perhaps there is more universal truth in sadness than in happiness?(less)

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Mar 05, 2013 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

A smart and witty first collection of stories, this Flannery O'Connor winner uses humor and intelligence to trace many different incarnations of love, mostly focusing on how it fails and falls apart. The best stories in it ("The Best Way Not to Freeze", "My Life in Theory", and "Theory of Dramatic Action") all infuse this failure with hope, a resilience of the human spirit that is rare in short fiction these days. Its best achievement though is the way it makes you laugh with the author and her...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Meghan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, in-the-next-room

Love, in Theory by E.J. Levy is a gorgeous collection of short stories examining the nature of love, need, desire, and connection in human experience. Levy’s prose is compelling and poetic, succeeding in embodying each character with complexity and uniqueness. This is an especially impressive accomplishment because Levy dives deeply into all types of love—affairs, new romances, decades of marriage, gay and lesbian relationships, family feuds—with the same meticulous attention to detail and voice...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Amadeus rated it 4 of 5 stars

I work with undergraduate English majors; many would like to study creative writing. This is the sort of book that I would encourage them to read because it's often, in part, that reading good literature helps us become better writers. This is good literature. E.J. Levy has a rhythm and flow that I love and her word choice and voice are beautiful.

The lack of one more star is probably just personal preference--these stories present a somewhat depressing view of love. Yes, love is hard and confus...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wish there was a star for "meh mostly but a couple good". Overall, the characters were flat and their stories boring. There were 2 noteworthy exceptions, that I went back and re-read because they really hit me. But I would have rather have read those in a journal than trudged through the whole book.

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Apr 21, 2013 Jay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

An unsentimental look at love - examined in all it's complicated and messy glory. This collection of stories about relationships moves away from theoretical love, instead showing the examined life. Levy's writing is graceful, intelligent and direct - sculpting stories that find their own niche.

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Sep 16, 2012 Lisa marked it as to-read

Coming out in October! Reading at Politics and Prose in DC on October 14 at 1 pm.

More on this author: http://ejlevy.com/

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Sep 16, 2012 Maureen Stanton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Rich, funny, heartfelt, and intellectual stories from a hugely talented writer.

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Sep 17, 2012 Sue Watson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Love, relationships, and human nature at its finest - beautifully-written stories well deserved of the Flannery O'Connor Award

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Shelves: cultural-studies

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Shelves: short-stories

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