The Course of Love: A Novel
“An engrossing tale [that] provides plenty of food for thought” (People, Best New Books pick), this playful, wise, and profoundly moving second novel from the internationally bestselling author of How Proust Can Change Your Life tracks the beautifully complicated arc of a romantic partnership.
We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as “happily ever after.” The Course of Love explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. We see, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading. As The New York Times says, “The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton’s name in the mid-1990s….love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods, and insecurities to the page.”
This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love. “There’s no writer alive like de Botton, and his latest ambitious undertaking is as enlightening and humanizing as his previous works” (Chicago Tribune).
We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh, a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as “happily ever after.” The Course of Love explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence. We see, along with Rabih and Kirsten, the first flush of infatuation, the effortlessness of falling into romantic love, and the course of life thereafter. Interwoven with their story and its challenges is an overlay of philosophy—an annotation and a guide to what we are reading. As The New York Times says, “The Course of Love is a return to the form that made Mr. de Botton’s name in the mid-1990s….love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods, and insecurities to the page.”
This is a Romantic novel in the true sense, one interested in exploring how love can survive and thrive in the long term. The result is a sensory experience—fictional, philosophical, psychological—that urges us to identify deeply with these characters and to reflect on his and her own experiences in love. Fresh, visceral, and utterly compelling, The Course of Love is a provocative and life-affirming novel for everyone who believes in love. “There’s no writer alive like de Botton, and his latest ambitious undertaking is as enlightening and humanizing as his previous works” (Chicago Tribune).
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Community Reviews
There are some stories that you feel grateful for having had the opportunity to read and reflect upon...this is one of those works - well-written, clever and heart achingly truthful it follows the "course of love" of Rabih and his wife Kirsten as they navigate the challenges and trivialities of life and what does it really mean to be a loving and considerate partner as well as the constant negotiation between the self and the other in a family dynamic where one's ego can cause irreparable damage ...this book has an excellent turn of phrase and this one does justice towards providing a clearer summation of the book: "Very little can be made perfect, he knows that now. He has a sense of the bravery it takes to live even an utterly mediocre life like his own" (pg. 221) - I do feel that anyone in a partnership worth cherishing and salvaging should read this...
This is part novel, part lecture about love, responsibility, and emotional maturity. De Botton writes beautifully and often lyrically, but in his narrative about the relationship (and eventual longterm marriage) between Rabih and Kirsten, the author continually interrupts with his own philosophy. For example, while reading about Rabih's feeling that, having first met Kirsten, he has "the feeling of having happened upon a long-lost missing part of his own self," we get3 paragraphs of philosophy about the workings of the Romantic mind.
At first I enjoyed the digressions, because De Botton really is wise and looks at love seriously and from what seems a very highly developed emotional intelligence. But so many interruptions became fatiguing and intrusive. The author is skillful enough that the lessons he wanted to state could have been made purely through the characters' development, thoughts, and dialogue itself.
One of the best lines in the book is one De Botton liked enough to repeat it himself: "He (Rabih) will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." This also crystallizes the author's message: that one needs to mature in their understanding of true love, practice it, develop personally, in order to get it right. I just wish he hadn't kept writing as if to say, "Ahem, I'm here again with another announcement from our sponsors."
At first I enjoyed the digressions, because De Botton really is wise and looks at love seriously and from what seems a very highly developed emotional intelligence. But so many interruptions became fatiguing and intrusive. The author is skillful enough that the lessons he wanted to state could have been made purely through the characters' development, thoughts, and dialogue itself.
One of the best lines in the book is one De Botton liked enough to repeat it himself: "He (Rabih) will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm." This also crystallizes the author's message: that one needs to mature in their understanding of true love, practice it, develop personally, in order to get it right. I just wish he hadn't kept writing as if to say, "Ahem, I'm here again with another announcement from our sponsors."
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