Skip it. Blasphemy, I know, but consider: Equal Rites and Mort, Sir Terry’s first decent books, are 1987 and 1988 respectively. The dreadful Color of Magic is 1983. These stories, with one exception, are 1970-1975! Publishing them is like grabbing Picasso’s third-grade sketches off his parents’ fridge. Sure, there are tiny recognizable glimmers of what is to come, but they’re stepping stones. None of this is actually good nor worth reading.
Plot twist: I found myself growing angry as I read. In a book that is in every possible way entirely about love. Why are some people such meddling busybodies? How DARE they prescribe a one-size-fits-all lifestyle, and hurt those who don’t fit in? I’m looking right at you, churches. Fuck you all.
Anyhow. This is a lovely book that, in a better world, would not be necessary. Each chapter is a portrait of real people in what some neurotics (see above) would call unconventional relationships. Each is intimate, sometimes bordering on uncomfortably so. Necessary, given the nature of the book. Some of the relationships come off as beautiful, some less so (to me). Some ended in heartbreak; others will one day; but every single one of them has led to growth & happiness & rewards for all involved. That’s what it’s about. That’s why we put ourselves out there and risk our hearts, “conventionally” or not.
The final chapter has great, thought-inducing material on government-sanctioned relationships: marriage, domestic partnership, a really cool legal framework in Colorado that I need to learn more about, for granting specific and distinct financial/medical end-of-life designations possibly to different people. Marriage is obviously an antiquated and idiotic institution, what surprised me is just how harmful it really can be. Worth reading for this chapter alone.
Well researched and referenced. Compassionately written, although it’s very clear that Cohen is young. This is probably a good book for younger people. Us olds, we either understand it already or we never will. It is my great fortune, a blessing, that I only hang out with people who do.
I didn't mean to read it. I picked it up intending to skim, scan, browse. It didn't work out that way.
This book is amazing. Not only do the authors have an eerie sense for human factors, they can communicate their findings. Well organized, well written, almost even inspirational. It was moment after moment of “aha!”, recognizing so many examples of what I've seen in real life to work and not to work. The gift of genius is to explain something so well that it seems obvious in hindsight; the authors accomplish that.
I think this has the potential to be a life-changing book. I wish I'd read it twenty years ago.
Better than I had expected. (The next two are better, but I wouldn't recommend reading them without having read this one as background).
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