cover image Book of Love

Book of Love

Mary G. Durkin. Forge, $25.95 (512pp) ISBN 978-0-312-87183-3

Priest, sociologist and mystery novelist Greeley and his sister Durkin bring out the many facets of love with this uneven but often rewarding anthology of poetry, stories, scripture and folk tales from many cultures. Following St. Paul, the editors deem love not just an emotion, but a ""virtue"" that mediates many kinds of relationships. While romantic verse takes pride of place, Greeley and Durkin also offer selections from Huckleberry Finn to illustrate friendship, Oscar Wilde on love of family, Keats's Ode to a Nightingale on love of nature, the 23rd Psalm on love of God, and Shelley on the primal urge of dualities to unite that animates the universe. Some of the selections, like the trite love letters from Mozart and Tsar Nicholas II to their wives, are ill chosen, and the much too generous helpings of the editors' (and their relatives') own writings do not come off well in the company of Chaucer and Shakespeare, but most readers will find something here to enchant and move them.