Publisher:
Electric
Monkey
Release
Date: 2nd
January 2014
Edition:
UK paperback,
review copy
Other
Titles by this Author: Boy
Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility,
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with
Rachel Cohn), Are
We There Yet?,
Wide Awake, Naomi & Eli’s No-Kiss
List (with Rachel Cohn), Love is the
Higher Law, Will
Grayson, Will Grayson (with
John Green), The Lover’s Dictionary, Dash
& Lily’s Book of Dares (with
Rachel Cohn), Invisibility
(with Andrea
Cremer), Every Day, Two Boys Kissing
They
met on a plane
At
a coffee shop
In
class
It
was a set-up
It
was completely random
They
were dancing
It
was love at first sight
It
took time
It
was a disaster!
A
collection of stories about love from the New York Times bestselling
author of Every Day.
I fell in love with David
Levithan’s writing last year. I think I’ll continue to do so this year, as well;
How They Met and Other Stories is
just utterly gorgeous.
In the author’s note at the
beginning of this collection, Levithan discusses how he prefers to the term ‘stories
about love’ over ‘love stories’ and I honestly don’t think this could be described
more perfectly. Not a single stone is left unturned when it comes to the topic
of love in these stories Levithan write for his friends every Valentine’s Day (I
know, lucky people, right?). Every type of love, every beginning and end of
love, every crush, every knock-back, every kiss is revelled in with these
stories.
It’s not even just Levithan’s
unbelievably beautiful writing, it’s the variety of forms and styles he uses,
the thoughts I’d never considered thinking he plants, the questions he makes me
ask, the realisations he makes me have, it’s the love I have for the characters
of these stories in under twenty pages. It blows my mind. The man has
incredible skill. And warmth. And knowledge of people.
There are eighteen stories in
this collection and I really struggled to pick only a few to tell you about
specifically; they’re all just brilliant, but I eventually managed it. How They Met and Other starts with the most
traditional sort of story about love; it’s called ‘Starbucks Boy’. It’s a sweet
story surrounding meeting someone in an everyday situation and spending your
time daydreaming about them until one day something changes and it happens –
the daydream becomes reality. Later in the book came ‘The Alumni Interview’. You
know when you get to the last sentence of something which changes the form and
everything and it’s just such a big surprise that you say aloud ‘oh’ on a
silent, but full, train? Yeah, that. I them smiled to myself like a loon
because it was brilliant and I really liked what Levithan did with it. I think I
might go and re-read it in a minute you know...
‘The Alumni Interview’ isn’t
the only story to play with form. One of the final stories, ‘What a Song Can Do’
is written in verse and song lyrics. I’m usually not a huge fan of stories
written in verse, but this, while not my absolutely favourite, was still
brilliantly done. I felt the characters properly and felt fully involved in the
story. But my favourite story, I finally decided, is ‘Princes’. A gorgeous
story about dancing, friendship, a crush, train rides and brothers, especially
brothers. I didn’t expect the story to take that turn, but I’m so glad it did. I
loved that prejudice was fought within the home and it resulted in something as
equally awesome: love.
I adored every page of How They Met and Other Stories and I’m
eagerly awaiting the next David Levithan book to be published over here; I believe
it’s Two Boys Kissing which just
makes me HAPPY. Bring it.
Huge thanks to Electric Monkey
for sending me a copy for review.
Sophie
Thank you so much for the honest review , i cant wait to read it xx
ReplyDelete