A review by ci_reads
The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I loved it. The novel takes you beyond the happily ever after into the the mundane, flawed, and sometimes frustrating and difficult parts of love in a committed relationship. This is explored through the relationship of  Kristen and Rabih from the time they meet to about 13 years into their marriage. The story of the novel was interspersed with psychological commentary, and each chapter reads almost more like an anecdote for that commentary than a part of a larger story. Some people won't like the lack of compelling story and plot, but the style worked for me. 

de Botton doesn't pull punches about the reality of marriage, but I appreciated the anti-Romantic message of love being deliberate choices over the course of a lifetime, not the miracle of finding "the one". 

The Romantic vision of marriage stresses the importance of finding the “right” person, which is taken to mean someone in sympathy with the raft of our interests and values. There is no such person over the long term. We are too varied and peculiar. There cannot be lasting congruence. The partner truly best suited to us is not the one who miraculously happens to share every taste but the one who can negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and good grace. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate dissimilarity that is the true marker of the “right” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn’t be its precondition.

Much of what de Botton says about romance, choices in love, and the wear and tear of marriage feel really recognizable. I also felt so seen at times, sometimes through the actions of Kristen and at other times Rabih. The style of the book gave me a chance to really think and analyze about why I am a certain way, and how to be a better partner to my husband of four years. Ultimately, the take-away lesson for me was the deliberateness of making a daily choice to accept your partner and their flaws, treat them with empathy, and try to spend time understanding how they view the world.

My only complaints were the handling of some topics that seemed to justify or even glorify some terrible behavior in marriage. Particularly de Botton's treatment of blame and infidelity really rubbed me the wrong way. The overall male-centric view throughout the book may have contributed to this. I do wish we could have heard from Kristen's point of view too.

Love stories begin not when we fear someone may be unwilling to see us again but when they decide they have no objection to seeing us all the time.

We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.

The child teaches the adult something else about love: that genuine love should involve a constant attempt to interpret with maximal generosity what might be going on, at any time, beneath the surface of difficult and unappealing behavior.

He knows that perfect happiness comes in tiny, incremental units only, perhaps no longer than five minutes at a time. This is what one has to take with both hands and cherish."

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