Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7111 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-20
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
"Essays in Love" will appeal to anyone who has ever been in a relationship or confused about love. The book charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak. The work's genius lies in the way it minutely analyses emotions we've all felt before but have perhaps never understood so well: it includes a chapter on the anxieties of when and how to say 'I love you' and another on the challenges of disagreeing with someone else's taste in shoes.While gripping the reader with the talent of a great novelist, de Botton brings a philosopher's sensibility to his analyses of the emotions of love, resulting in a genre-breaking book that is at once touching and thought-provoking. 'The book's success has much to do with its beautifully modelled sentences, its wry humour and its unwavering deadpan respect for its reader's intelligence ...full of keen observation and flashes of genuine lyricism, acuity and depth' - Francine Prose, New Republic. 'Witty, funny, sophisticated, neatly tied up, and full of wise and illuminating insights' - P. J. Kavanagh, "Spectator".

'De Botton is a national treasure' - Susan Hill. 'I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life' - Jan Morris, "New Statesman". 'Single-handedly, de Botton has taken philosophy back to its simplest and most important purpose: helping us to live our lives' - "Independent".

Customer Reviews

Boring and self centered..
I love Alain de Botton's 'Architecture of Happiness" and "The Art of Travel"; highly intelligent and wonderful books. This book was like sitting in a pub, listening to one of your friends who has just be dumped. If you like people who wallow in self pity, and talk about 'so called love' this book is for you; but this book had me running for the hills! It just made me think that possibly the author has never experience true love. Dissappointing, and quite sad.

Novel approach to popular philosophy
Alain de Botton's first book is a mixture of novel and essay, charting the development and disintegration of a love affair. Whilst the book would probably fail as a novel - there is little plot, and the characters and the scenarios in which they are placed serve only to illustrate de Botton's philosophical musings on the many aspects of love, it succeeds as an easily accessible, thought-provoking, often amusing and original work. The author writes clearly, engagingly and with wit and intelligence. Recommended.

A read that strikes a chord.
This is a wonderful book. It charts the development of a relationship between the speaker and a woman he meets on a flight. Everyone will undoubtedly relate to the different stages of the relationship, from initial uncomfortable exchanges, charged with expectation, to the concern that you are more involved than your object of desire. It's a book that contains moments of high humour and accurately depicts the frustrations, confusions, joy and desolate despair that only romantic entanglement can bring. Neatly suffused with readable and thought provoking asides, this is a fantastic book - read it.