I reread this incredibly sweet love story last weekend. It opens in 1978 (and features a restaurant I remember from childhood-Beefsteak Charlie's!) and focuses on two classmates who fall in love during their senior year.

They vow to stay together forever but college plans separate them and nearly twenty years pass before they see each other again. Witty, hysterically funny, touching and sincere, ALMOST LIKE BEING IN LOVE might have you wondering whatever happened to your first love...

True love is almost as hard to find in a book as it is in real life. Hundreds of lesfic romances try to get it right, but often fail. That is why authors like Gun Brooke are so valuable to the genre.

The earnest, heartfelt writing appeals to me, sometimes speaking to personal experience that cuts quick to one's very core: 

"During phys ed, when the other girls talked about their latest crush on a boy, I felt nothing. Instead, there was a girl.” Manon smiled as if she could see her. “Funny, I can’t even remember her name, but she was shy and really pretty. I liked to watch her play basketball—the way her body moved, and how she beamed after she scored. I exchanged maybe ten words with her, but the fact that I found her cute and attractive…and had nobody to talk to about it scared me to death."

Coffee Sonata is beautiful and sweet, sometimes so much so it makes your heart hurt. And there's certainly lots of love to go around, even if that is what contributes to the one weakness in this novel: too much story and not enough time to tell it.

Vivian and Mike, Manon and Eryn...four wonderful women, all unexpectedly falling into relationships they never see coming. Of the two relationships, I cherished the one Vivian and Mike share the most. They feel so fiercely and fear so much. 

Manon and Eryn are great as well, but the "coming out" issues and family concerns hit just a bit too close for me. As terrific as the book is, Coffee Sonata bites off more than it can chew at times. It might fare just a tad better as two separate romance novels.

Monday odds and ends...

If you have ever felt like this:

Sometimes, you think that no one has ever loved you. You have almost flippantly doubted it, even when someone was saying it to you. Even if they are saying it to you today. Because, though you wouldn’t like to admit it, you’re not terribly sure that you love yourself. You reject all of the simpering notions in beauty magazines and you learn to say nice things about yourself when you look in the mirror. If someone asked, you could provide an objective list of your qualities. But you’re not sure that “loving yourself” is something you ever really learned how to do.

Sometimes, you wonder if everyone is faking it, even the people who seem to have it all down to a science.

you can read more here:

 http://thoughtcatalog.com/chelsea-fagan/2013/08/for-when-you-think-that-no-one-will-love-you/


I picked up a copy of Book Forum the other day at Barnes and Noble and read a fascinating review for a novel called Last Words From Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin. There's one amazing line (among many) where the main character decides to only "engage" the love she feels for someone else, not the actual woman she for she has strong feelings. Like other deceptively small books (it's 161 pages), it has a lot to say.

 

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”
― John Lennon

Every once in a blue moon I have a really nice dream that hurts to wake up from and yet somehow still gives me hope. The hope and the aftereffects of the dream seem to last for about the same amount of time, in order words: not very long. But while the haziness lasts, it's almost as real and as gorgeous as the dream itself.

This morning I woke up from one where I had met someone who loved me as much as I loved her. She told my mother (not unkindly, but still quite firmly) that we were going to be married and, oddly enough, my mother seemed okay with it. It was probably one of the most beautiful dreams I've ever had.

And though waking and reality's harsh slap stung for a bit, the silly dream gave me (for a fleeting second) an idea of what a wonderful world it would be, if things like that could actually happen.

so far...

The Girl Most Likely To Be Unloved

A time travel short story (rough draft)

The classified ads at the back of the magazine were absolutely fascinating, but none so much as what I saw in the July 21, 1922 issue I opened one particularly lonely day late in 2012.

My darling A., it began, I know not where you have gone, but surely it could not have been willingly. The months since you disappeared have been absolutely agonizing and after what you said the very last time I saw you I find it so hard to believe you’re gone forever. You once said where you come from there is something called ‘missed connections,’ where people can advertise their pain over loss or missing out on chance meetings. Here in our town we just have the classifieds so I thought I take a stab at it. You always lovingly laughed when I called you the cat’s pajamas, but, my dear, you are and always will be to me. Please, please return. My love always, C.

How beautiful and charming and…wait, Missed Connections!? I was reading the magazine off of my ereading device, but it was reproduced exactly as it would have been in 1922. As I moved to the next month’s issue, another ad addressed the same way caught my eye:

My darling A.,You told me once you loved this magazine and that you read it from cover to cover, even though most of the time the issues were very old.It occurred to me that you might not know this is for you unless I mention specifics without being too specific. The sadness in your eyes, your conviction you would never ever be loved, that you felt in your youth you would grow up to be the girl most likely to be Unloved, all of that pulled me in, made me want to make you happy and prove how much you could be loved. Your eyes, green as fresh grass, your hair, so different than any other’s, and your love for books, music and animals made me want to stay with you always. Wherever you are, please know how much I care, how much I long to see you again.I cannot help but believe you would come back if you could. I know I did not imagine the love that shone in your eyes. Please do not imagine mine because it’s there and with all my heart it always will be. Yours Forever and After, C.

I dropped my ereader, not noticing or caring, two things I’d never do normally since I valued it more than life sometimes. I had no way of knowing who the writer was or why I even thought for one second it could be anything more than just a very very weird coincidence. Even if I were somehow lucky enough to track down a physical copy of the magazine, it hadn’t been a current publication since the late 30s. Who would be around to share old records with me? (Assuming they kept track of who sent in the ads or even if they had to take names to publish them?)

I had to believe it was a coincidence because there was nothing else to do now was there?

But apparently Fate (or the Universe) or maybe just C. herself had other plans. The next day, late morning, I received a package in the mail. When I opened it and slid out the letter another envelope fell to my feet. I picked it up, then read the sheet in my hand:

Dear Alison,

I don’t know how to explain what is enclosed in this package. To be quite honest, my family has always thought it the oddest thing to ever touch our family history, or anyone’s really, but we respected our great aunt’s wishes and have not opened the enclosed envelope. We know no more than you do, only that our Great Aunt Celeste explicitly stated upon her death bed that this letter was to be delivered to you.It is because she was an amazing woman and someone you always respected that we abided by her wishes, though how she could have known about you in 1933, the year she passed away, is the most bizarre thing ever.

Sincerely,

Maureen Hill

Hands trembling, I touched the second evelope as if it were somehow alive and then I softly slipped my fingers under the edge and pulled the flap open.

My darling Alison,

How much time has been wasted these past ten years. To wonder what had happened to you for over a decade and then discover the knowledge was with me, hidden as it was, the whole time breaks my heart. I can only hope the delay will not affect anything about our future, though given what I’ve come to think of as your past and my future, I worry it’s destined to never work out for us.

You buried a box in the bottom of my treasure chest. I write as if you will know what that means. I am being so illogical and silly about all of this so perhaps I should start from the beginning.I do not want to give you all of the details because in the letter you left you firmly state not to, so all I can tell you is: In January of 1922 we meet in Baltimore. In Lexington Market.

This, oddly enough according to you, is both by accident and on purpose. And there is no doubt when we meet that time stands still. So maybe it makes sense that it had to be disrupted for us to come into each other’s lives. You said in the letter that if I wrote you with something concrete about yourself you would believe me and do your very best to return for good, to stay with me so we could grow old together. Please, whatever it takes, come back to me and stay. Your fidelity, your loyalty and your chastity are just three of the things I adore about you, but there are three very important things. I would never laugh at you and how you see love and the world. You are mine and I yours for as long as we have together and forever after that. Love, Celeste