The Course of Love

Picked up from a charity shop and will be returned there. I rate de Botton as a philosopher/cultural theorist, but less so as a novelist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his angle here is to use fiction as a lens to explore more philosophical matters: how and why we fall in love is both ineffable and irrational. The term ‘falling in love’, de Botton seems to contend, is laden with context/emotion/melodrama. Love is often confused with lust and marriage can be another complicating factor in the equation. It is often quite remarkable, in de Botton's opinion, that we marry given how little we may know about our partner, yet given how much we expect. Theorising is all very well, but I felt let down by The Course of Love, since it did not resonate at all with my own relationship experience. I found myself asking regularly, do people ‘really’ live like this? Overall, the work too often descended into cliché and so simply felt contrived. If The Course of Love is a template for existence, then it is surely a depressing one. Trust and respect are all that should matter. Just my view: 4/10.

By Alain de Botton