How They Met And Other Stories - David Levithan

Short stories are the quickest way to turn me off from reading. They lack depth, characterization and a proper ending – it’s always some vague “we’ll see” that leaves me completely unsatisfied.

So as expected, David Levithan’s How They Met and Other Stories was an uneducated buy. As a professional reader, I should really learn how to at least read the back covers of books, but as Emma… Well that will never happen.

The book is a collection of short stories about couples meeting, with a twist. All the couples are either homosexual or lesbians. I didn’t know about this twist either and that is probably the reason I loved the book so much.

When you start reading the first story, and you have not read anything about the book, it reads as a guy with a crush. There is no obvious “omg I’m gay” element in the story – it is just like every other kind of story about a crush and that is amazing. I feel so many books that portray homosexual relationships focus the whole book about how the characters are not straight and how they struggle with that.

Not Levithan – he describes the characters exactly like they should be – normal teens in love with someone.

However, that does not mean there was love story between me and the book. The stories definitely got my interest, but I wish I would know more about the characters. Where do they come from? What happened to Miles? Thom? The Starbucks guy?

If I had my way, the whole book would have been the story of Miles. He is a professional dancer near New York City who falls in love with his dance teacher Graham. He comes out to his family by saying that Graham is his boyfriend, which is a lie. Through a twist of events, Graham is invited to a family gather and Miles have to figure out how to either get Graham to go with him or find someone else. I adored this story – I thought Miles was the sweetest guy (and watch out for the aaww cameo by his brother) and I really felt like I knew him. Except that I still have all these questions about Miles’ future and Graham and the whole family and the dance rehearsals and and and and… You get the picture.

This book is amazing for anyone who loves short stories (amazing as in, buy it right now please), and it’s even a good read for someone who doesn’t like them – if you can live with the frustration of not getting a conclusive answer to most of your questions.

Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West

As a “professional reader”, I should be able to read books and review them objectively. Leave out my personal life and ideas and look at how the book is written. Even though reviews are always biased, we should strive to make it as unbiased as possible.

This week, I didn’t succeed at this – sometimes I read a book that parallels with my life so much at the time, that the lines become blurred. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West was one of those books that seemed to perfectly describe someone in my life this week, which made me possibly dislike the book more than is justified. This served as a fair warning, so that you know why I hated the character of Miss Lonelyhearts.

The book trails the life of a man who works as Miss Lonelyhearts in the 1930s. He works at a newspaper and answers letters from people who are desperate. This is an era for pain and suffering in New York City and the column is widely popular with these people. They believe that they can be saved if they follow the advice of Miss Lonelyhearts. He always writes general responses in his column that discuss how belief in God would save them, without much care to any specific letter or person. Just general God talk.

However, for someone who was hired to write letters that are supposed to comfort people, Miss Lonelyhearts is a pretty insensitive, rude and egotistic person. The book is written from the point of view of Miss Lonelyhearts, which usually helps the reader relate to the character. Often, the main narrator is also the character we relate to the most. In this case, I found every single other character, which were all very minor due to the short length of the story, more likeable than the narrator. Miss Lonelyhearts is depressed because he hates his job. He hates reading about people’s problems, he hates communicating with people, he hates life and should be the one writing letters to someone else.

So the story is basically him moaning about his job and life, yet not being able to quit his job. If I would summarize him, I would call him lazy and without backbone (which is why he reminded me so much of someone I know).

However, besides my clear irritation of the personality of the main character, the writing in this book is amazing. Nathanael West was a buddy of F.S. Fitzgerald and they are very similar in their way of writing. West uses original comparisons and knows how to push a story forward without making it feel rushed. The story is short, yet there seems to be a lifetime of information about Miss Lonelyhearts in it.

Furthermore, the story is original. I was waiting for the moment Miss Lonelyhearts would see the light and marry his sweetheart and find his happiness. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but Nathanael West makes the story more interesting than that and the ending took me by complete surprise – which is always a plus in my book.

Maybe West’s most important strength is that he can write a character as irritating as Miss Lonelyhearts and have people still finish the book. No one deals willingly with those people in real life, however the beauty of the writing keeps readers willing to deal with Miss Lonelyhearts.