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A review by pawlonardo
Essays in Love by Alain de Botton
3.0
Honestly, it might be too high of a score for this book.
I found it filled with insight about love and how a person can romanticize everything, but my god, the ick I got from the way the narrator described his relation to Chole.
It's "the good guy trope" that is just too perfect for his own good. How can Chole (or rather any woman) deserve him? There is this misogynistic subtext that probably escapes a lot of men, but it does not make it ok.
The other thing is that this book is philosophical, and as with many of these kinds of books, it presents matters in a much deeper way than they actually are (partly to mask the narrator's misogyny).
The shoe incident is essentially a grandiose philosophical stretch of why would the narrator "care" so much about Chloe as to be "forced" to tell her that her shoes were ugly. Of course, he did it from a place of love and care, not because he is egotistical and cares about how she makes him look to others; that would be an outrageous conclusion.
I found it filled with insight about love and how a person can romanticize everything, but my god, the ick I got from the way the narrator described his relation to Chole.
It's "the good guy trope" that is just too perfect for his own good. How can Chole (or rather any woman) deserve him? There is this misogynistic subtext that probably escapes a lot of men, but it does not make it ok.
The other thing is that this book is philosophical, and as with many of these kinds of books, it presents matters in a much deeper way than they actually are (partly to mask the narrator's misogyny).
The shoe incident is essentially a grandiose philosophical stretch of why would the narrator "care" so much about Chloe as to be "forced" to tell her that her shoes were ugly. Of course, he did it from a place of love and care, not because he is egotistical and cares about how she makes him look to others; that would be an outrageous conclusion.