Five Modern Literary Romances
It’s the week of Valentine’s Day, and although there are thousands of classic literary love stories from Shakespeare to Jane Austen and beyond, we decided it was a good time to pick five remarkable novels that stuck with us. Of course, this list could be hundreds of titles long, but perhaps these are a good place to begin if you’re seeking stories of romance with difference and depth.
Graham Greene - The End of the Affair (1952)
There’s a reason Graham Greene is considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and nowhere is that more evident than in The End of the Affair, about a writer’s wartime tryst with a married woman that leads to obsession, jealousy and questions about love and belief that remain pressing even several decades after its publication. This book is a retrospective look at passion, at war and the fickleness of human nature.
Annie Ernaux - Simple Passion (1992)
In her spare, stark style, Nobel winner Annie Ernaux documents an all-consuming affair between her narrrator and a married foreigner who is elusive and confusing. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, this novel plots the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship that leads her to a kind of ruin and also a deeper understanding of herself.
Ian McEwan - Atonement (2001)
A modern classic, Ian McEwan’s Atonement is about much more than just love - it’s about class, childhood and war, as well as about differences in understanding and maturity. Following the short-lived love between Cecilia and Robbie Turner through the eyes of Briony, Cecilia’s younger sister, the novel surprises at every turn. From the chaos of the World War to the close of the century, it follows a crime and love with true mastery.
Maggie Nelson - The Argonauts (2015)
This is not a novel as much as a work of genre-bending memoir and theory, that offers new ways of thinking about love, desire, identity and family. At its centre is a romance between the author and the gender-fluid artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is a classic of modern queer writing and the changing shapes of passion and desire.
Caleb Azumah Nelson - Open Water (2021)
Open Water is a love story but also a story of race, masculinity and mental health. Following two young Black British Londoners over the course of their relationship, it is a story about the tenderness of their love as well as the challenges that stand in its way. Achingly beautiful and spare, it explores the position of Black bodies in London as well as the various ways in which mental health, generational violence and communication play a role in every love story.