This Is a Love Story: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel (Unabridged)
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2.8 • 8 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY
“This may be the most epic love story I’ve ever, ever read.”—Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY
An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both
For fifty years, Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.
Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood, and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.
An homage to New York City, to romance, and even to loss, This Is a Love Story tenderly and suspensefully captures deep truths about life and marriage in radiant prose. It is about love that endures despite what life throws at us, or perhaps even because of it.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A couple looks back on their lives together as one of them is dying from cancer in this poignant and powerful novel. The two have been visiting Central Park for 50 years, and the park has seen their highest of highs and lowest of lows. Accomplished artist Jane and successful author Abe reflect on everything from the seemingly insignificant moments to the big stuff they never gave enough space and time to. Author Jessica Soffer’s poetic narrative skips around, with some chapters told by their son, Max, who resents his mother and has ongoing trust and relationship issues; Alice, the grad student who falls in love with Abe; and even Central Park itself. Narrator Marin Ireland paces it perfectly, giving time for the poignancy of the words to really sink in. Intimate, complex, and lyrical, this stunning novel had us enraptured, skipping back to linger over the most beautiful lines again and again.
