{"id":10758,"date":"2025-04-28T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10758"},"modified":"2025-04-24T16:35:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T20:35:51","slug":"the-book-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/28\/the-book-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Love."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Book of Love<\/a><\/em> is Kelly Link\u2019s first novel, coming nine years after her third short story collection Get In Trouble<\/em> was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction \u2013 a rarity for genre fiction of any sort. This novel, following a quartet of teenagers after three of them end up accidentally dead and are purposely brought back to life by a demon of questionable intent, is a damn masterpiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel opens with Susannah mourning the disappearance and presumed death of her sister, Laura, and two of Laura\u2019s friends, Daniel \u2013 Susannah\u2019s putative boyfriend \u2013 and Mo, a year earlier. But it turns out they were just mostly dead, and in the second chapter, we meet the three of them, plus a fourth character, as the guy they thought was their boring music teacher Mr. Anabin reveals he\u2019s brought them back from the death place, and that he\u2019ll give them another chance at life, altering everyone else\u2019s memories so they think the trio were just away on a study-abroad program in Ireland. It turns out that this is part of a more complex deal between Mr. Anabin and another demon (or whatever he is) named Bogomil, whose history is longer and more complicated than anyone imagined. We follow the four as they try to figure out how to fulfill Mr. Anabin\u2019s requests so they can stay alive while also navigating their relationships with each other, with people in their New England town of Lovesend, with a new visitor or two, and with an all-powerful evil entity who would like nothing better than to just eat them all up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link builds the world of this book piecemeal, giving us hints as we go along as to what lies just beyond the \u2018door\u2019 through which the three friends passed, even holding off on introducing or explaining some key characters until well into the narrative. It adds to the book\u2019s dreamlike atmosphere, which itself connects to Susannah\u2019s dreams about Bogomil and the way Mr. Anabin and later other characters play with sense and memory, while also keeping the reader from becoming too omniscient, so we can better feel the confusion of the troika as they seek to understand their situation and their changing abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book overflows with interesting characters, highlighted by the fantastic four at the heart. Susannah and Laura are sisters, opposites in nearly every way, but believable and fleshed-out, even more than the two boys. Daniel\u2019s a bit of a goof, a well-meaning one, the guy who drifts through life while good things happen to him; while Mo is a more tragic figure who hates Daniel for exactly that reason. The way the four interact, with fights and tiffs and real moments of emotion, may be the greatest strength in a book that is as strong as any I\u2019ve read in a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n