Adult/YA

The Lover's Dictionary
by David Levithan
Farrar, Straus, Giroux
January 4th, 2011

A novel in dictionary entries that range from a word to a few pages. Some of the words are what you might expect, others are surprising. The story (and there is an overarching narrative) is not arranged chronologically, but alphabetically, as a dictionary would be. Due to this, I thought I'd be able to dip into it, but instead I couldn't put it down. I had to see how the pieces would fit together; I got lost in the moments. Love stories are easily overdone, but I found this story sweet (though that could be due to the teen books I usually read). Then again, sometimes a quietly sweet book is wonderful. The only regret I have is not reading it when other people were around- then I could have read passages aloud- and some of them beg for this. Buy this book before Valentine's day, and bookmark passages as you read (or annotate) and then present it as a gift.

I read some reviews of the book on ipage before I began. Some say the story is of a heterosexual couple, one of a homosexual couple. I tried figuring it out as I read, but I found I didn't care, it worked in my head either way, and eventually I just went with those images. But I still wonder what David was thinking when he wrote it.