Though I've read the 'Introduction: Axiomatic' from Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet a number of times, this book was my first big dose of her--and frankly, I'm glad I began here. Not to say that's she's not a fabulous theorist, but that I just don't know enough and I think it will be rather nice to move into that sphere of her work having had the opportunity to 'get to know' her through this little text. A real loss to queer studies (and, it seems after reading this, the world) when Sedgwick passed last year. I was fortunate enough to have attended the conference in her honor at Boston University in the fall, which sparked my interest in grabbing A Dialogue on Love up.
Let's get a couple of things clear. This is not a wildly theoretical text. This is not a daunting read. It doesn't purport to 'explain' love in any comprehensive sense. But it is a tender, beautiful glimpse into one woman's life--a woman still struggling with recent breast cancer, a woman suffering possible depression, a woman coming to terms with her family history, her sexuality, her aversion to analysts, and (naturally) quite a bit more. It's set as a sort of 'dialogue' between her and Shannon, her analyst. The transition between the 'voices' can be disconcerting at times, but is usually pretty fascinating to watch-particularly to see where Sedgwick decides to illuminate a scene or an issue from Shannon's vantage point (via his notes) rather than her own. It can be a method of concealment--or can perhaps suggest that he's more the 'expert' on her experience than she herself was. But the lines between patient and 'expert' increasingly break down over the course of this, with Eve visiting Shannon in the hospital for his own life-threatening illness near the end of their journey.
This is more a memoir than anything, though she blurs the boundaries of genre in a number of ways--by the presentation of the 'opposing' voices of patient and analyst, the use of memory and supposed 'real time' experience (which is of course also recollected), and perhaps most jarringly, the use of haiku interspersed as part of the 'normal' writing. She breaks into and out of it seemingly at random, though if you look closer, the breaks often make sense, in terms of picking out particularly salient observations or moments of beauty (that perhaps you'd otherwise breeze over). It's a sensitive portrait of a brief period in Eve Segdwick's life, and is a really wonderful read. 4 rather than 5 stars, because I'm trying to be more stingy with my 5-stars these days; I think I was a big softie when I joined goodreads. Though maybe when I come back to this book sometime, I'll rethink my rating, 'cuz this often (also) turned me into a big ol' softie.