We hear a lot about non-monogamy and non-monogamous relationships. However, love fiction is still mainly focused on (heterosexual) couples. Most of the books I read about alternative relationships were all essays and nonfiction. But I must say that they always left me feeling that they were too abstract and theoretical, often getting lost in a meander of labels, explaining all the possible types of relationships and their internal rules. I know that some people like this, this obsessive theorizing of everything and the consequent rationalization of feelings. I, in all honesty, do not consider myself a big fan of it. I usually need to empathize with the characters to really understand when it comes to feelings, or I like to observe real situations around me. Theories are just words. Also, whenever I read an essay on non-monogamy, I’ve always wondered: but where do they find these people who are so emotionally mature, so good at communicating? Is it just me, or out there, there just doesn’t seem to be all that much care for relationships and attention to other people’s feelings? Bah, maybe there’s some secret club that I’m not aware of. If I have to tell the whole truth, at this time in my life non-monogamy is not something that particularly fascinates me, however, I would undoubtedly like to meet more and more people who are conscious of their own feelings and attentive to others and who value relationships in their lives, in a caring, committed way, not in a consumerist and selfish way.
That said, I always find it interesting to learn about love stories other than the most common ones because I’m curious to see the dynamics that make them work (or not).
That’s why I love fiction because I think it’s the best emotional education we can have. Because without labels and eagerness for perfection, it makes us see things as they really are, or as they could be. In their imperfection and contingency.
Here are 3 examples of different love stories and families that particularly impressed me in literature.
“A House at the End of the World,” Michael Cunningham, 1990.
I loved this book and its bittersweet atmosphere, especially in the first part of the novel, which follows the love/friendship story between Jonathan and Bobby, two childhood friends from Cleveland who become friends and even lovers as teenagers; in the background, the families of the two and what is left of the American Dream, especially we hear the voice of Jonathan’s mother, Alice, witnessing the relationship between the two boys.
Bobby and Jonathan lose touch for many years, when the latter decides to move to New York to study. They eventually meet again in this very city, when Bobby decides to move in with him and his roommate Clare. Bobby and Clare have an affair and out of this a baby girl, Rebecca, is born. So the three create a polyamorous family in a country house, which becomes a symbol of the search for the perfect place outside the world, where they can feel free and part of something. But dreams are often unmasked by reality, and this polyamorous idyll will face (like all relationships) its own complications and pains.
“Luster,” Raven Leilani, 2020.
Edie is a 23-year-old young black woman living in New York City. She’s messy, sweet and funny, looking for her place in the world like everyone else in our generation. On Tinder she meets Eric, an older man with an open marriage, and begins a relationship with him. After being laid off, being completely broke, she starts living with Eric, his wife Rebecca (who was sort of okay with this) and their adopted black daughter Akila. Eric remains in the background and the three women begin to measure up to each other as they try to find a balance between their inner loneliness and their need to rely on someone. I found this book very interesting and very realistic, like a mirror of so many relationships today. I wouldn’t say it’s a story about love. The impression I got is that it’s about fear of love and loneliness. We see four people who study each other, who decide to share a space (one actually, being a child, doesn’t decide at all), but who basically are alone, living for themselves, not really leaning on others. Other themes that I think emerge are indecision, not being totally aware of what one wants, fear of abandonment and rejection. The description that is given of sex left me with a sense of coldness: it seems more like a (half-hearted) attempt to feel alive, the search for human warmth, but without wanting to expose oneself too much or seek real contact with the other. Sex in this book is more of an escape than an encounter.
“Never Let Me Go” Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005.
Somewhere in a dystopian England, in the mid-1990s. Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth grow up at Hailsham, a boarding school lost in the countryside. It’s not just another school, because all the students are clones designed to become organ donors when they become adults. Dystopia aside, this book is completely about human relationships. Kathy, Tommy and Ruth form a deep bond from childhood that oscillates between friendship, love, but also competition and sometimes hostility. The setting in a college in the English countryside has always been a part of my childhood imagination, for some reason when I was a child, I dreamed of being a part of such a school, obviously not like this one since the students don’t exactly end up well. I was thinking more about the atmosphere of Harry Potter or Dead Poet’s Society. I liked to see how special the relationships were in living together at a young age, and in a way I envied them, even if they didn’t have their parents nearby. Maybe it was because I wasn’t doing so well at home and I would have liked to live surrounded by lots of children instead of alone (I am an only child).
To go back to the book, I remember that it had particularly impressed me when I had read it, because of its ability to describe those relationships that we carry with us forever, relationships that perhaps we never really chose. That mix of hate and love that we often feel for childhood best friends, given by the visceral affection that binds us and that inevitable competition that comes from being different. Like that chapter in which Kathy studies in detail how to spite Ruth and then finds herself realizing that all she’s doing is planning to hurt her best friend.
The third figure, the contended man Tommy, who is somehow in love with both of them, is crucial and further complicates the plot.
