Lisa Appignanesi is the author of many prize-winning works of fiction and nonfiction. The chair of the Freud Museum and former president of English PEN, she lives in London. In the first section of this book, she examines the riddle of love — that four-letter word which has led to such a rich mixture of pain and pleasure, light and dark, disappointment and enthusiasm. Appignanesi writes:
"Indeed, love carries a freight of experience that takes us from cradle to grave. It frolics amongst the daffodils, dances to the secret tunes of perversity and transgression, drives some mad and others insanely happy."
This ambitious work takes within its embrace "a life history of love" beginning with our attempts at first love and moving on to marriage, followed by its expression in triangles, families, and friendship. Love in these incarnations is an unruly emotion which cannot be held down or contained.
Appignanesi has a knack for using colorful books, movies, poems, and other cultural artifacts as illustrative material as she works her way through love’s diverse dimensions. And, of course, in the background is sex which "calls up the most intense, the most difficult feelings we have." She marches through marriage with a fluid ease but hits high stride in her coverage of adulterous passions and unhappy females, secrecy, and jealousy.
"Friendship," Appignanesi notes, "catapults us out of the sphere of kin and binds us into a world of others." She savors the variety of love and its different shades. She manages to take us to some places we have not been before and that certainly is a saving grace in a book on love.
