What makes a great love story?

a romantic rose... plus thorns
a romantic rose… plus thorns

‘Reader, I married him.’ A great love story can end that way, but only after a load of trouble. As we know from Shakespeare, true love involves a rocky ride, in literature at least. A compelling romance must have drama; someone, or something, has to oppose it and try to stop it happening. And in a truly great love story, the threat to the lovers has to appear insurmountable. We want to believe that love can conquer all, but at some point in the story, it has to look horribly likely that love is going to lose.

In John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars the stakes are sky-high from the outset; the forces ranged against the young lovers are depression, loneliness, illness and death. But that doesn’t stop the spark between them at that first meeting. If anything, it intensifies it.

True love is stubborn to a fault, and flourishes in the face of poor odds. It is also not sensible, convenient or rational. I can understand why Charlotte Lucas accepts Mr Collins’s proposal in Pride and Prejudice, I can even admire her pragmatism, but nobody would dream of describing their relationship as a great love story.

IMG_0398

True love changes the lovers; in a really great love story, there will always be a transformation (or several). Take Romeo, who is teased by his friends at the beginning of Romeo and Juliet for moping around and pining for someone who isn’t even interested in him. He believes himself to be in love, but he doesn’t really know what it is. Then he meets Juliet and – kapow! – he is no longer a self-indulgent boy.

He is also no longer unrequited. Great love stories are never one-sided; there may be spells of confusion and separation and alienation – in fact, there almost certainly will be – but ultimately, the lovers will find some kind of equilibrium, even if this is only possible when they have lost their lives (think Wuthering Heights). They might not start off as equals, at least not in society’s eyes, but they have to end up that way, from the reader’s point of view if not the world’s.

Sparring, rivals and secrets

Jane Eyre is one of my favourite love stories, and had such a big impact on me that it crept into my very first novel, which I wrote as a child, without me even realising it. My story featured a burning house and a first wife tucked away somewhere, and it ended with a wedding. (I hope it’s not a spoiler to note that the quote at the beginning of this post – ‘Reader, I married him’ – is Jane’s.)

the end of my first-ever novel
the end of my first novel

Jane is Rochester’s employee and his social inferior, but she is not about to let him get away with anything. This leads to a fair amount of sparring, which he seems to quite enjoy – they are clearly comfortable with each other – but a series of increasingly deadly threats rise up to force them apart. Jane has a love rival: the beautiful, wealthy and heartless Blanche Ingram. And then there is the madwoman in the attic, and the revelation that forces Jane to flee. Lovers do not keep secrets from each other; any attempt to keep the past locked away out of sight is an enemy to love.

cover of After I Left You

In After I Left You, my new novel, Anna last said goodbye to Victor, her university boyfriend, seventeen years ago, and she has never told him the full story of the chain of events that led to her decision to cut off all contact with him. Something has silenced her, and she has lived a kind of half-life ever since.

When they meet again, her old feelings for him begin to return; but if she is to seize her chance of happiness, she is going to have to make the leap of faith that is always part of love, overcome her fears, give up her secret and speak out. Where there’s love there’s hope, and in any love story there is the possibility of transformation, and a question to be answered: will they or won’t they come together in the end?

A version of this post first appeared on the Diana Verlag blog. Diana Verlag is the publisher of the German edition of After I Left You.

Und dann, eines Tages, the German edition of After I Left You
Cover © t. mutzenbach design, shutterstock

After I Left You ebook first! Publication update

summer holiday reading
Will After I Left You be your summer holiday reading?

OK, people, here’s the news: the publication date for the paperback of my next novel, After I Left You, has been moved back to July 2014 − BUT the ebook will be published at the end of January.

So if you love your Kindle or e-Reader, you’ll have a long head start. If you prefer a paperback, the timing could be just right for you to take After I Left You on your summer holiday…

Isn’t reading a big part of the joy of going on holiday? In the above pic I’m deep in John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy while on a boat holiday (check my 80s hairdo –  I was a teenager). One of my best holiday reads ever was Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, the one and only time I got some winter sun. I’ll always associate that book with the luxury of escaping from Britain in January.

After I Left You: ebook in January, paperback in July

Sometimes there are changes late in the day in the world of publishing – it’s just how it goes. If you were looking forward to getting your hands on the paperback of After I Left You, I promise you it will be worth the wait! I love paperbacks myself – I spend a lot of my time staring at screens, so it feels like a treat to read a story in this format. It does mean we have stacks of books everywhere, but I kind of like that too – I’d miss them if they weren’t around.

In the end, the paperback of After I Left You will have a much better chance of reaching as many readers as possible as a summertime book. Still, I’m really pleased that the ebook is coming out at the end of January and if this is the way that you like to read, I hope you’ll try it, love it and recommend it! There is nothing like word of mouth!

You can see a range of suppliers for both the paperback and ebook of After I Left You on the website of Transworld, my brilliant publishers (have a look round, they have lots of fantastic authors and I’m very lucky to be in such good hands).

If you’d prefer to read the paperback, it should be stocked by all good bookstores, including local independents.  Independent bookshops such as Mostly Books in Abingdon are brilliant at ordering books in – I did my Christmas shopping at Mostly Books by sending an email with a long list and picked them up from the shop the next day. Mostly Books is also happy to post books to you.

Books Are My Bag
Outside Mostly Books in Abingdon. Books Are My Bag!

You can also pre-order the paperback of After I Left You or the ebook from Amazon.

What people have said so far about After I Left You…

Other writers have made some lovely comments about After I Left You. Alice Peterson, author of Monday to Friday Man (which knocked Fifty Shades of Grey off the Kindle no 1 spot!) had this to say about it: ‘A lovely absorbing read, so evocative of student life. Alison Mercer really captures the passion of falling in love for the first time.’  Tamar Cohen, author of The Mistress’s Revenge, said, ‘Alison Mercer has expertly spun an engrossing story about love, secrets and second chances.’

You’ll also find a couple of lovely reader reviews on Goodreads. These readers won proof copies of After I Left You in a giveaway and I was really pleased they enjoyed it. At the risk of coming over all Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars, or at least sounding a bit corny, I found it very emotional to write, so it’s lovely when readers respond to that.

I’ll be posting sneak peeks of After I Left You on my Facebook page in the run-up to the publication of the ebook. Right – now I have to crack on with writing the next one!

After I Left You becomes Und dann, eines Tages

Und dann, eines Tages, the German edition of After I Left You
Cover © t. mutzenbach design, shutterstock

The German edition of After I Left You comes out in summer 2014, and it’s called Und dann, eines Tages. I love the cover design the publisher, Diana Verlag, has come up with – it refers to a specific scene in the book, as you’ll see when you get to it, but you don’t need to know this to pick up what the image suggests.

Just before Christmas I got a fantastic treat in the post: the Diana Verlag May to October 2014 catalogue. Their edition of After I Left You is on the cover and looking beautiful on a double-page spread inside.

Diana Verlag catalogue cover
Diana Verlag catalogue with Und dann, eines Tages on the cover

Once upon a time someone – perhaps several someones, friends or lovers – sat on that bench underneath that beautiful tree.  Who were they, what happened to them, and where did they go?

Diana Verlag catalogue page
All about Und dann, eines Tages in the Diana Verlag catalogue

The catalogue describes the novel as ‘about first love and the years that follow’. The story opens with Anna sheltering from the rain in a London bookshop and bumping into Victor, her first love from her university days. She hasn’t seen him for seventeen years. This chance encounter is destined to change Anna’s life, but first both of them will have to face up to the secrets of her past.

Other writers have made some lovely comments about the novel. Alice Peterson, author of Monday to Friday Man (which knocked Fifty Shades of Grey off the Kindle no 1 spot!) had this to say about it: ‘A lovely absorbing read, so evocative of student life. Alison Mercer really captures the passion of falling in love for the first time.’  Tamar Cohen, author of The Mistress’s Revenge, said, ‘Alison Mercer has expertly spun an engrossing story about love, secrets and second chances.’

I am so pleased that the novel is being translated for German readers, and I really hope they will love it.

I’ve just been on a hunt through some old photographs to find a snap from a trip I made to Berlin back in 2000 – here it is!

Alison Mercer in Berlin
In Berlin back in 2000

I thought it was a wonderful city, full of energy and busily rebuilding itself. It was also very friendly, and there were plenty of quirky little bars – I’m in one of them in this picture.

At that time, there was a huge amount of construction and renovation work going on in Berlin – you’d walk along a row of houses and one would be awaiting restoration, the next would be covered in scaffolding and the third would be gleaming and good as new. There was very little evidence of when you were passing into the former East Berlin, apart from the bright pink overhead pipes that were used to carry cables, and, as I remember, the flat cap and pipe sported by the little green man on the pedestrian crossing signs.

I don’t know anything much about architecture, but I remember the Reichstag building as one of the most beautiful and impressive I’ve ever visited – there’s something very powerful about being able to look down and see politicians toiling away underneath your feet! You can see a video of it here.

The visit made me wish that I’d found some way to live in Berlin in the late 90s, and spent a little less time in London! I very much hope to visit Germany again one day.

The two types of love story and After I Left You

love
Aphrodite, by my daughter


Here’s a narrative rule about love stories (but rules are made to be broken) – they usually work in one of two ways:

1.)    The romance. Boy meets girl, or man meets woman, but they are separated by apparently insurmountable obstacles: pride and prejudice, for example, or social inequality and a mad wife in the attic. Eventually the obstacles are overcome and the couple are united. Jane Eyre is my favourite example of this kind of story – it’s my Ur-romance, the one I read first.

2.)    Is the inverse of 1.) The couple come together some time before the end, and the drive of the story, as it turns out, is towards separation, as insurmountable obstacles come between the lovers and force them apart.

It can be (should be?) hard to tell which kind of story you’re reading till the very last page. Both use your uncertainty and doubt, and the suspense that creates, to hook you in and pull you through. Will they or won’t they?

My second novel, After I Left You, uses two timelines to give the same two people two different love stories. In the present, they meet long after the end of their relationship; many years earlier, they encounter each other for the first time. It’s not will they or won’t they, so much as: why can’t she (or shouldn’t she)? It’s not due to be published till January 2014, though, so if that’s piqued your curiosity, there’s a bit longer to wait to see how it turns out in the end.

Love and un-love, from Casablanca to Gone Girl

I have been told that readers, and viewers, like conclusive endings, and I think that is true, but some stories make a virtue out of uncertainty. Gone with the Wind is an obvious example: will-they-or-won’t-they remains as a final hope, a grace note, conferring a tentative immortality on the sparring lovers by raising the possibility that they may one day rebound together yet again.

Here are some other classic films that fall into the second type (where the lovers fall apart rather than together):

  1. Casablanca. Here the obstacle is War, the epic backdrop against which the troubles of three people don’t amount to more than a hill of beans. But as far as we’re concerned, of course, the individuals are epic, and the war is reduced to a horizon line, its details smoothed and miniaturised by distance.
  2. Brief Encounter. Surely one of the most heartbreaking of love stories. Here the lovers are up against not just society and its values, but also their own morality – the imperative to be good and sad rather than bad and briefly, selfishly happy. I agree wholeheartedly with Zadie Smith’s assertion, in a review published in her essay collection Changing My Mind, about what makes this film so distinctively English: when the couple decide they must part, most of their agonising final encounter is given over to politely passing the time of day with a busybody acquaintance. There really is no escaping other people.
  3. Love Story. Girl meets boy, they fall in love; then she gets sick. There is nothing like definitive loss to define what has been lost.

Every love story needs opposition – whether it’s war, ill health, other people, death – to tell us what love is. But love can be so mixed up with un-love (separation, isolation, anger, fear) that it is difficult to tell them apart. Gone Girl (which might more accurately be called a hate story than a love story) gets plenty of mileage out of our instinctive understanding of this: what possibilities lurk in the un-love we might prefer not to acknowledge?

When I studied Romeo and Juliet at school, our teacher pointed out how shrewd Shakespeare was to introduce a Romeo who professed to be in love with some other random girl, and was teased by his friends for being pathetic about it. When Juliet comes along we are in no doubt that this is suddenly the real thing. It’s mutual, for a start. It’s eloquent (it speaks in sonnets). The lovers are inspired, and transformed… but the odds are stacked up against them, in direct proportion to the strength of their feelings.

A blood feud is certainly an unpromising beginning to in-law relations. Not to mention the dawn that brings the lark and not the nightingale, the charm that works all too well, the message that fails to meet its destination, and, ultimately, mortality, the conclusion that waits to sever all lovers in the end (though in art at least, even that can be overcome).

What do we talk about when we talk about love?

Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a brilliantly concise, and oblique, answer to the questions that all love stories ask: what is love, really, and how do we know when it’s real?  The story introduces two couples, who are going to discuss the subject for us by invoking the stories of other couples, all the while knocking back stacks of booze.

First up is Terri, who is, as her husband Mel says, a romantic ‘of the kick-me-so-I’ll-know-you-love-me school’. Terri describes an ex who beat her up one night: ‘He dragged me around the living room by my ankles. He kept saying, I love you, I love you, you bitch… what do you do with love like that?’ Terri is convinced this was love – ‘he was willing to die for it. He did die for it,’ but Mel is not so sure: ‘I’m not interested in that kind of love… If that’s love, you can have it.’

So then it’s Mel’s chance to have his say. What does he talk about when he talks about love? Well – I urge you to read the whole story to find out (it’s only 13 pages long), but here’s a taster: ‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it… But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did. I know I did… How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone would tell me.’

Also, if you haven’t yet, read (or re-read) James Joyce’s short story The Dead, about another lost love. See where it ends. See where the promise of love can take you. And see if the hairs don’t stand up on the back of your neck.