My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro

»When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it», notes the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex in his introduction to this collection of love stories from literature. «But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.» Here then are 27 such cures for lovesickness and antidotes to adultery — by Harold Brodkey, Grace Paley, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Milan Kundera, and Vladimir Nabokov.