I was talking to my friend about the Greek novel. In their opinion, these texts are structured by the paradox of desire, the idea that, as one approaches the desirable other, one loses the desired image and is forced to face the being behind it — the result being that the initial desire is never really fulfilled. Apparently, this paradox is structurally embedded in the ways that the texts play with closure, or in the ways that, as the lover attempts to get closer to his beloved, the beloved seems to become more compromised or enshrouded.
I’m hesitant to draw any kind of history of the novel here, or to collapse the ancient novel with the ones we read now, but I guess one thing that I could say is this: the novel is very well suited to explore how desire interacts with form. Of course it can do other things, but right now, this relationship between narrative and desire feels very important to me — as if it might be easier to assess a book if we can identify how the narrative maps onto various images of or ideas about desire. I’ve been trying for a long time to understand what is so offputting to me about certain books, and what I love so much about others. So consider this to be one attempt — in my quest to figure out how to judge a novel, and from which standpoint, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s important to be able to judge romance novels and novels about love. This has something to do with the fact that desire and narrative are so closely intertwined, in that desire always generates narrative, and style and theme too, in that it tends to reshape the world into a collection of refractions of the object of desire. Being in love feels like being in a novel. On the other side, so many novels are about being in love.
With this in mind, I decided to compare a popular romance novel with a novel that I personally like, and to ask the question: what are the erotic or romantic fantasies that structure these books? Can this tell me something about whether these books are good or bad? For this project, I read the first two books in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, by Sarah J. Maas. As an anchor point on the ‘books I like’ side, I’ll be using A Green Equinox, by Elizabeth Mavor.
A Green Equinox is an excellent novel about a woman, Hero Kilhoun, who falls in love with her lover’s wife, and then his mother. Each new infatuation brings about a new style of narration, a new landscape that the protagonist inhabits. What is most striking about this book to me is that Hero’s three infatuated states are used to explore her relationship with the past and the future. In the book’s first scene, she tells us that she harbors an unhealthy obsession with the past, which she shares with her lover Hugh – throughout the book, both characters encounter various new approaches first to the future and then, finally, to the present. Landscape, time, and love are blurred together, to the extent that love is construed as a sort of colonization, exploration or cultivation process across space/time.
One of the things I like most about this book is how situated it is in Hero-as-subject. Her objects of desire move closer to her and then farther away, and it is the directionality of her desire toward these receding objects which allows her to change as the plot progresses. In attempting to achieve her desires, she builds, in one case literally, a new landscape around her. In short, this book is meaningful because of the distance or friction between Hero and the ones she loves. In this gap between subject and object, narrative and character unfolds. In the end, Hero is left alone to act for herself, and this, too, resonates with me – her desire for others mingles with her desire for self-becoming.
I think that love is about reaching, about continually trying to inhabit and understand something which is outside of oneself. This is the sense in which ‘love is attention’. I know I am always talking about A Fairly Honourable Defeat, but there is a scene in that book in which one of the characters, Simon, is reflecting on his experiences of trying to find a good birthday gift for his partner, Axel. Simon has struggled throughout the years to understand Axel’s taste, and how to give him a gift which reflects Axel’s preferences and his own. Although some years he has failed, this year he is satisfied with the subtle floral tie that he has bought for Axel. Even something as simple as buying his partner a tie, then, is an attempt to approach Axel, to understand his needs and tastes, with the recognition that the other man’s mind will always remain separate from his own. Simon has to understand Axel through his own limited point of view, and Axel must do the same for Simon, but the aim of the relationship is to facilitate these mundane, fleeting moments of understanding which characterizes love.
So, in short, the model story about love on which these two books hang has to do with love as an attempted meeting between two separate people, a continual exploration of the world that has as its goal the attempt to understand the other, but also the self. Understanding is achieved, lost, achieved again. This, to me, feels very true and beautiful.
On the other hand, I’ve been thinking about ‘romantasy’, a portmanteau for the fantasy romance novels that have become so popular in recent years. My theory is that fantasy romances are especially popular because the fantasy genre allows for writers to push the bond between lovers further, to imagine types of connection that are not possible outside of the fantasy world. This creates a situation that readers seem to really like: a couple that is bonded through some magical facility that allows for true, sometimes uninterrupted, understanding.
The love story in ACOTAR is structured as a kind of generic bait-and-switch. We start with a fairy tale retelling: a young human woman falls in love with a faerie and saves him from a sinister faerie queen (this story actually engages with the Tam Lin ballad tradition, one of my favorites). At the end of the first book, Feyre, the human protagonist, dies and is resurrected as a faerie. She then goes to live with her hard won betrothed, Tamlin.
Unfortunately Feyre is traumatised by the horrors she went through when she was winning Tamlin back. During the second book, the trauma plot interrupts the traditional romance plot, as we see Feyre leave Tamlin, whom she cannot communicate with in her traumatised state. The rest of the book focuses on her healing process, as she begins to feel like a person again. This is the thing, though – the trauma plot is also a romance plot. Feyre is supported in her healing process by Rhysand whom, through circumstances that I will not describe here, she can communicate with over a bond that connects their minds. The two feel each other’s emotions, and can speak to each other over long distances. This bond is later revealed to be the ‘mating bond’. The two are mates, and therefore, their love encompasses this sort of mind-sharing which collapses distance and makes communication easy.
The pairing of the trauma plot with this concept of the mating bond is interesting to me for the kind of fantasy it implies – the fantasy of healing alongside a partner who understands you seamlessly, who anticipates your needs because he feels what you feel. This stands in contrast to past relationships which are, by nature, characterized by the mutual hurt of distance and miscommunication. I felt that this was a very manipulative narrative, seizing on the hurts and desires of young women who feel wounded by clumsy first attempts at love that break down through lack of mutual understanding. It takes time and patience to learn that the best ‘understanding’ that we can achieve is a continual process of mutual attention, that there is no moment when a lover will be able to read your mind, forever, for the rest of your life. The idea that it’s ‘hot’ to achieve some kind of partner mind-meld points to a troubling belief, namely, that eroticism, the continual interplay and striving between self and other, isn’t ‘hot’. These books aren’t scorching adult romances, though they’re talked about that way by their fans – they’re fantasies of idealized regression, of a world closer to an infantile state than an adult partnership where the boundaries between self and other don’t exist. But you can still have sex, of course.
I’ve outlined here two types of love narrative which might be associated with two different types of book, the first being literary fiction written by women, the second being romantasy written by women. I’m not sure if my critique of the latter tells me anything about whether those books are good or bad. I’m inclined to think, though, that from a narrative standpoint, the self/other friction that characterizes A Green Equinox provides a path to ideas that challenge the narrative voice, and therefore the reader – to great, surprising reversals in the plot – whereas the hijacking of the romance plot for the trauma plot in ACOTAR collapses this friction and creates a curiously conflict-free atmosphere. I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to unfairly single out ACOTAR – I think a lot of novels in this genre use similar tropes. There are also lots of good works of speculative fiction which use desire as a point of exploration instead of collapse – although it’s more so about friendship, The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin, is one of my favorite encounters with otherness in literature.
Really enjoying your Substack. I've read a few posts now and you write brilliantly about books - in that you use books to write about life. I've never heard of A Green Equinox before but I'm very intrigued to look into it now.
Also, "Her objects of desire move closer to her and then farther away, and it is the directionality of her desire toward these receding objects which allows her to change as the plot progresses." - such a wonderful observation on personal growth.