This Is a Love Story: A Read with Jenna Pick
A Novel
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3.5 • 70 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. Intimate, complex, and lyrical, this stunning novel had us enraptured, skipping back to linger over the most beautiful lines again and again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A New York City artist reckons with her terminal illness in the poignant if overstuffed latest from Soffer (Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots). Jane, a successful painter, is dying of cancer. Her husband, celebrated author Abe, sits at her bedside and takes her on visits to nearby Central Park, where they recount their relationship, beginning with when they met at Tavern on the Green; Jane was working there to put herself through art school and Abe had just graduated from Wharton. After they marry and have a son, Jane deals with postpartum depression and worries her career is over. Other sections follow their 30-year-old son, Max, a womanizing art dealer who resents Jane for giving more time to her work than to him, and Alice, a graduate student of Abe's who falls in love with him. The narration feels somewhat fragmented and sluggish, especially in recurring digressions on Central Park as a place where people fall in love ("In the Park, there is handholding, making out, blushing, the sharing of ham and cheese sandwiches, iced teas, double chocolate chip cookies, blazers, gloves, tissues, and headphones playing Billie Holiday"). Soffer is better when she keeps the focus on the main characters. Patient readers will find something to appreciate in this delicate meditation on love.
