“Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?”
– “The Sky is Everywhere” by Jandy Nelson.
Spotlight on: LOVE
What is it about love? As soon as a book is about love and relationships, people immediately label it as trashy. It’s like we’re embarrassed to be seen reading about love. But isn’t love the one thing that every person on the planet has in common? We’ve all been in love – or we want to be. Pull out your iPod or turn on the radio – most of the songs will be about love. Love is universal, and it’s my absolute favourite topic to write about.
It’s pretty hard to think of a young adult novel that doesn’t feature a romantic story, but I’ve singled out a few favourites. If you want to fall in love, have your heart broken, fall in love again and cry everywhere, try Gayle Foreman’s If I Stay or Jandy Nelson’s The Sky is Everywhere. Like your love stories full of art, humour and a little night-time danger? Pick up a copy of Cath Crowley’s Graffiti Moon. If you want your love a little less heteronormative, you can’t go past David Levithan’s Boy Meets Boy (and we also love the romance in the books he’s written with Rachel Cohn – try Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist or Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares).
But love isn’t just about romance and relationships. You can love your car, or your country, or your pet cat. You can love an idea. In Greek, there are four different words for love, covering romantic love (agape, best translated as “true love”), passionate, physical love (eros), love between friends (philia), and family love (storge).
What about the love a dog has for his owner? Try Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go. The love between a captain in the Napoleonic Wars and his trusty dragon? Check out Naomi Novik’s Temeraire. If you want to see the kind of dark places that love can take you, try Margo Lanagan’s Sea Hearts.
Do all fine stories have a passion at their heart? Is there a book you love? What is your passion?