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LIKE LOVE by Michele Morano Kirkus Star

LIKE LOVE

by Michele Morano

Pub Date: Sept. 25th, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8142-5598-8
Publisher: Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press

A prismatic exploration of the complexities and contradictions of close relationships.

Readers of Morano’s Grammar Lessons (2007) will be eager to get their hands on this gifted essayist’s second book, and they won’t be disappointed. The first book was set during the author’s year in Spain, and the theme of its widely admired title essay—the frustrations and complexities of love—is again the throughline here. In addition to romantic love, Morano also delves into family love, teacher-student love, best-friend love, and other varieties of less-categorizable love. The deeply immersive pieces about growing up—“Breaking and Entering,” “About Wayne,” “Boy Crazy,” and particularly “Evenings at the Collegeview Diner”—create the feel of a memoir, with the author’s relationships with her mother, who briefly explored lesbianism in mid-1970s blue-collar Poughkeepsie, and with her best friend at the center. “All The Power This Charm Doth Owe” both completes the mother-daughter story and introduces Kevin, the author’s great love. Other standouts include “Crushed,” a funny, fearless, and relatable exploration of a teacher’s crush on a 12-year-old student, and “Like Love,” a travel vignette that displays Morano’s skill in this genre. Oddly enough, the least compelling essays are about “regular” romantic love. “The Law of Definite Proportions,” about a frustrating platonic relationship, is less resonant and probably should not have opened the collection. “Ars Romantica (Or a Dozen Ways of Looking at Love)” is interesting formally but drags a bit. Here and elsewhere, Morano handles death as a footnote or an aside, an aesthetic choice that suggests an emotional style analogous to other writers' choices to rely on black humor or obsessive focus. In general, the author’s prose evokes her experience of the world with clarity and power.

A sharp eye, brave intellect, and satisfying writing make this worth a look even for those who don’t usually read essays.