You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by quenchgum
Couplets: A Love Story by Maggie Millner
4.0
Couplets is an extremely accessible and binge-worthy "novel in verse".
If you found the narrative voice anywhere near as compelling as I did, you'll probably blow through the book in an hour or two, flipping madly and letting the slant rhymes wash over you as you wait to see how it ends. And, if you're like me, you'll turn back to the start to let everything sink in properly, because there's honestly a good chunk of stuff here to think about.
Millner is bringing in Audre Lorde and Virginia Woolf, Rachel Cusk and Adrienne Rich. She knows that humans are messy and want clean narratives that can be neatly packaged, filed, and tucked away. Her usage of rhyming couplets -- which, by definition, develop but then always resolve a rhyme within each pairing of lines -- reminds us of and reinforces the cultural expectation of self-contained, defined endings. But Millner refuses to squish messy realities into something so artificially neat. She knows that the cultural expectations around self-development are too tight, too confining, too unforgiving of life's realities. And so, even after Millner's narrator has really surrendered control and ridden the wave and cooked the whole enchilada, she still never lands at any final conclusions about herself or her relationships. If anything, all she's learned is that there is no end point to growth, and that nobody's narrative should have a tidy resolution (or any resolution at all, really).
Millner doesn't stop there. She's thinking about the power of erotic love -- both sexual and platonic, as championed by Audre Lorde -- to connect humans inside and outside of relationships. She's exploring what it may look like for relationships to end consensually, and for partners to continue to respect and revere their prior partners as they move forward with their lives. What would our world be like if we didn't attach moral values to forever partnerships? What if it's actually OK that things were what they were for a finite period of time?
If you liked this form, you may enjoy Anne Carson's [b:Autobiography of Red|61049|Autobiography of Red|Anne Carson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403176248l/61049._SY75_.jpg|1396256] (which is a bit less clear/accessible than Millner's Couplets) or Maggie Nelson's [b:Bluets|6798263|Bluets|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1354902976l/6798263._SY75_.jpg|7003912] (less of a clear storyline, but similar format) and [b:The Argonauts|22929741|The Argonauts|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410981835l/22929741._SX50_.jpg|42499230] (which has an academic flair similar to Couplets).
4.0/5.
If you found the narrative voice anywhere near as compelling as I did, you'll probably blow through the book in an hour or two, flipping madly and letting the slant rhymes wash over you as you wait to see how it ends. And, if you're like me, you'll turn back to the start to let everything sink in properly, because there's honestly a good chunk of stuff here to think about.
Millner is bringing in Audre Lorde and Virginia Woolf, Rachel Cusk and Adrienne Rich. She knows that humans are messy and want clean narratives that can be neatly packaged, filed, and tucked away. Her usage of rhyming couplets -- which, by definition, develop but then always resolve a rhyme within each pairing of lines -- reminds us of and reinforces the cultural expectation of self-contained, defined endings. But Millner refuses to squish messy realities into something so artificially neat. She knows that the cultural expectations around self-development are too tight, too confining, too unforgiving of life's realities. And so, even after Millner's narrator has really surrendered control and ridden the wave and cooked the whole enchilada, she still never lands at any final conclusions about herself or her relationships. If anything, all she's learned is that there is no end point to growth, and that nobody's narrative should have a tidy resolution (or any resolution at all, really).
Millner doesn't stop there. She's thinking about the power of erotic love -- both sexual and platonic, as championed by Audre Lorde -- to connect humans inside and outside of relationships. She's exploring what it may look like for relationships to end consensually, and for partners to continue to respect and revere their prior partners as they move forward with their lives. What would our world be like if we didn't attach moral values to forever partnerships? What if it's actually OK that things were what they were for a finite period of time?
If you liked this form, you may enjoy Anne Carson's [b:Autobiography of Red|61049|Autobiography of Red|Anne Carson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403176248l/61049._SY75_.jpg|1396256] (which is a bit less clear/accessible than Millner's Couplets) or Maggie Nelson's [b:Bluets|6798263|Bluets|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1354902976l/6798263._SY75_.jpg|7003912] (less of a clear storyline, but similar format) and [b:The Argonauts|22929741|The Argonauts|Maggie Nelson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410981835l/22929741._SX50_.jpg|42499230] (which has an academic flair similar to Couplets).
4.0/5.