Take a photo of a barcode or cover

davramlocke 's review for:
The Lover's Dictionary
by David Levithan
The Lover's Dictionary is a brave book because it does something I've never seen done before, aside from maybe in writing exercises. Each page takes a different letter of the alphabet and makes a small chapter of it that could last anywhere from a sentence to a page and a half of text. This is dangerous ground because linking together a jumble of disconnected words into something that could be considered a story is something most writers would have trouble with. Everyone has their methods and standards, and to toy with those conventions could mean disaster. But Levithan manages to do it in a way that it's hardly even noticeable that he is travelling in an alphabetical order.
The story itself is about a couple, as many, many stories are. It tells the tale of their inception and dissolution, and the uncertainty of each. In other words, though the tale is full of love and heartbreak, the eventual conclusion is ambiguous, and if you think that a spoiler of sorts, maybe it is, but I feel like the outcome of the two characters is irrelevant to the actual story of how they became "we".
There is beautiful language in The Lover's Dictionary, and some could even call a majority of it a poetry of sorts. The metaphors are clever and relevant to whatever word they happen to be wrapped around in such a way that the creativity at coming up with them seems supernatural somehow. I even had suspicions while reading through it that this work is autobiographical in many ways simply because few authors are able to replicate the nuances and beauty of reality in such a way as to make the two inseparable. If Levithan managed to do so, then more the credit to him.
The story itself is about a couple, as many, many stories are. It tells the tale of their inception and dissolution, and the uncertainty of each. In other words, though the tale is full of love and heartbreak, the eventual conclusion is ambiguous, and if you think that a spoiler of sorts, maybe it is, but I feel like the outcome of the two characters is irrelevant to the actual story of how they became "we".
There is beautiful language in The Lover's Dictionary, and some could even call a majority of it a poetry of sorts. The metaphors are clever and relevant to whatever word they happen to be wrapped around in such a way that the creativity at coming up with them seems supernatural somehow. I even had suspicions while reading through it that this work is autobiographical in many ways simply because few authors are able to replicate the nuances and beauty of reality in such a way as to make the two inseparable. If Levithan managed to do so, then more the credit to him.