Modern Love: True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion

Daniel Jones

Crown/Archetype, Jan 23, 2007 - Literary Collections - 400 pages

50 Irresistible True Accounts of Love in the Twenty-first Century.

A young woman wryly describes a relationship that races from start to finish almost entirely via text messages.

A Casanova is jilted after an idyllic three weeks and learns the hard way that the woman is, well, just not that into him.

An overweight woman in a sexless marriage wrestles with the rules of desire.

A young man recounts the high-wire act of sharing the woman he loves with both her husband and another boyfriend.

A female sergeant in the Missouri National Guard, fresh from Iraq, tells what she is not supposed to tell about the woman she is not allowed to love.

These are just a few of the people whose stories are included in Modern Love, a collection of the fifty most revealing, funny, stirring essays from the New York Times’s popular “Modern Love” column. Editor Daniel Jones has arranged these tales to capture the ebb and flow of relationships, from seeking love and tying the knot to having children and finding love that endures. (Cynics and melancholics can skip right to the section on splitting up.) Taken together, these essays show through a modern lens how love drives, haunts, and enriches us.

For anyone who’s loved, lost, stalked an ex, or made a lasting connection, and for the voyeur in all of us, Modern Love is the perfect match.

Contents

• No? No? No? Let Me Read Between the Lines: 3
• Traveling the TooMuchInformation Highway: 10
• A Prince Charming for the Prom Not Ever After Though: 17
• Sandra Barron: 24
• Whos That Lady in the Bedroom Daddy?: 31
• Seemed Plucky and Game Even to Myself: 38
• Misery Loves Fried Chicken: 45
• Abby Sher: 52
• Like New With a Few Broken Parts: 59
• Loved and Lost? Its Okay Especially If You: 67
• Hear That Wedding March Often Enough You Fall in Step: 74
• Two Men Baby on the Way and: 81
• The Third Half of a Couple: 88
• Elvis and My Husband Have Left the Building: 95
• Our Bodies Our Imaginations: 102
• Three Men and a Woman: 109
• Kirsten Allen Major: 116
• Youre Least Expecting: 123
• Bonnie J Rough: 133
• Debora Spar: 140
• Richard Reiss: 147
• Looking for Love at the Sperm Bank: 154
• Ann Hood: 161
• The New Nanny Diaries Are Online: 167
• Carolyn Megan: 174
• Claire Scovell LaZebnik: 181
• A Body Scarred a Marriage Healed: 191
• Ayelet Waldman: 198
• Helen Gerhardt: 204
• Sleeping with the Guitar Player: 211
• Kevin Cahillane: 218
• Jill and Jill Live on the Hill but One Must Boil the Water: 225
• The Day the House Blew: 232
• Loss and Redemption: 239
• The Chickens in the Oven My Husbands Out the Door: 249
• Witness to a Wedding That Wasnt: 256
• So Handsome So Clever So Gone: 263
• A Reincarnation and Just When I Didnt Need: 270
• Losing Custody of My Hope: 277
• How Could I Tell Him What I Knew? How Could I Not?: 284
• Paradise Lost Domestic Division: 291
• Renee Watabe: 298
• Beyond Divorce and Even Death a Promise Kept: 307
• Katherine Tanney: 314
• Brendan Halpin: 321
• Kerry Reilly: 328
• Brian Goedde: 334
• One Final Connection: 341
• A Devotion That Eclipsed the Family: 347
• At Sixteen I Gave Him Up Could We Try Again?: 354
• About the Contributors: 361
• Acknowledgments: 377

About the author

DANIEL JONES edits the weekly “Modern Love” column in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times. He is also the editor of The Bastard on the Couch and the author of After Lucy. He lives with his family in Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Modern Love: True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion
• Editor: Daniel Jones
• Publisher: Crown/Archetype, 2007
• ISBN: 030738277X, 9780307382771
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Family & Relationships / Love & Romance; Literary Collections / Essays