The Lover's Dictionary

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan  211 pp.

I'm a big fan of Levithan's young adult novels. I enjoy the creative "gimmicks" he uses to tell the story. This book is adult fiction and is actually a dictionary of sorts. Each page is a word (in alphabetical order, of course) with a "definition" that tells a part of a story of a romance between a man and a woman. Some of the definitions are brief, just a couple sentences. Others are lengthier and go into more detail of what is happening between them. Some are serious, others amusing e.g. "celibacy, n.  n/a" and "I, n.  Me without anyone else." Even though the entries are disjointed in many ways, the story of the relationship comes through complete with ups and downs. It is obvious that the narrator of the story (editor of the dictionary?) frequently has ambivalent feelings about the relationship, especially his partner's drinking. At the end I was left wondering if this couple could make it for the long term.