not in love book reviews

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(as of Jan 01, 2025 19:24:14 UTC - Details)

This “heart-stoppingly good” masterpiece about a crumbling love affair in 1950s New York perfectly captures “the desperate desire for love and the recognition that it is slipping away” (Slate).

“One of the greatest, bleakest breakup stories ever told.” — The New York Observer

New York in the 1950s. A man on a barstool is telling a story about a woman he met in a bar, early married and soon divorced, her child farmed out to her parents, good-looking, if a little past her prime. They’d gone out, they’d grown close, but as far as he was concerned it didn’t add up to much. He was a busy man.

Then one day, out dancing, she runs into a rich awkward lovelorn businessman. He’ll pay for her to be his, pay her a lot. And now the narrator discovers that he is as much in love with her as she is with him, perhaps more, though it will take him a while to realize just how utterly lost he is.

Executed with the cool smoky brilliance of a classic Miles Davis track, In Love is an unequaled exploration of the tethered—and untethered—heart.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Reprint edition (July 23, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 160 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590176669
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590176665
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.98 x 0.34 x 7.97 inches
Reviewer: vs
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: of love and everything else
Review: Hayes' writing seems convoluted. And convoluted it is. Sentences stretch for half a page, interminable "I thought she thought" and "I assumed she wanted", punctuation where you don't expect it and no punctuation where you do. But after you read two or three pages, you come to understand that this is a style. This is more or less a stream of consciousness of the main character. It's his monologue - unedited. The way he sees things, the way he feels and the way he thinks other people do.Hayes is very economical in his use of words and manner of expression, still his prose is very precise and powerful, whether he describes emotions or behavior or landscape. This novel, or rather novella, is just some 160 pages long, but it creates on these few pages psychological portraits of 3 main characters and even in a few lines of text here and there - of some minor characters.This novel is definitely about love, but it's also about much more: about human condition in general. Sufferings of the main character - his love, his inability or lack of ability to commit himself, his lame and futile attempts to change something without really changing anything - all this is shown in so generic terms that it can be some "every-man" or "any-man" experiencing all this.Male protagonist in this novel is not very attractive; he's no knight in shining armor. In some episodes he's outright disgusting. But other inhabitants of this book are not too nice either. By showing to us his girlfriend's mood change on their way and when they come to Atlantic City hotel, Hayes gives us a hint and makes us to think of the possibility - or impossibility - of different outcomes had the male protagonist behaved differently.And female protagonist is very generic too; not very attractive either. "She had expected, being beautiful, the rewards of being beautiful; at least some of them; one wasn't beautiful for nothing in a world which insisted that the most important thing for a girl to be was beautiful." Surely her portrait is not very flattering for women. But Hayes is not in the flattering business.Some people compare this book with the film "Indecent proposal". This is so totally wrong. The book is much larger, even though sex and money are at the center of the narrative in both cases, in the book we are presented with so much more psychologically nuanced, subtle and emotionally moving picture.Hayes has wry sense of humor, or rather sarcasm; this can be seen, especially, in the second half of the book, starting with the chapter about their trip to Atlantic City and the following one, the conversation with Vivian. Sometimes Anita Loos comes to mind with her "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". But "In Love" is much more serious and bitter.Another forgotten little great book. Brilliant, very sharp introduction by Frederic Raphael. Thanks again to NYRB Classics.

Reviewer: Cameron Preston Kruger
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Clear Idea
Review: "In Love" is a simple tale of a man and woman who separate. Their breakup is the plot. It's a painful, perceptive, and patient study of men and women, love and marriage, confidence and insecurity. It's funny, tragic, and beautifully written.

Reviewer: Alex S.R.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Every bit a masterpiece.
Review: Not a missed note, nor an overlooked morsel of observation into the full spectrum of the human condition when in and out of lust/love. The writing succeeds in transforming the chaos of raw emotion into a sequence of images, each wrapped in the music of the language. Transformative reading indeed. A story composed of the acknowledgement of tiny moments, each of them a little miracle, that would vanish in time if they were in lesser hands. Hayes’s writing pulls you into the very man, and allows you to see the world as he sees it, and to feel the full measure of his sorrow. He places you on his shoulder and, in a series of thoughtful passages, turns you into a voyeur, a fly in the rooms of his defeats. A painful read certainly, but one so beautiful as to transcend that pain and blaze on into full catharsis. This is a classic example of good writing in its most elevated form; the scenes come across as paintings. A visual language that stays in the mind as dreams do immidiately upon waking. You’re in good hands here. All that's required of you as the reader is to trust him completely. He delivers the goods, in spades.

Reviewer: Maverick
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Exactly what I expected to expect.
Review: In Love is exactly the kind of novel I would expect to be written in this time period. With women's increasing independence, men are left struggling to learn what that would mean in a world where women are capable of choosing their own futures.The MC seems to have difficulty grappling with the females increasing independence, his actions and thoughts reflect that of a man not in control but out of it. Thoughts reverse to its polar opposite before the page is over and there is a through of covering every emotion, thought and convulsing agony of man in love.Is it love, or an inability to control?Though we see the world strictly through his eyes it's always painfully clear to the reader precisely what the woman is thinking and feeling, and how the man's actions never seem to be an appropriate reaction to it. It's frustrating to watch inability to actually see her for who she is.None of that is a criticism. Its thorough and brief, explicit and concise, and a testament to this writers ability. Every fractal of a feeling is rendered in brutal poetry. True art.That being said this novel feels out of tine, out of place. Reading it now is like watching a sitcom from the era, adorable in its political incorrectness.Would still recommend.

Reviewer: Richard S. Dixon Jr.
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The 1950s as it lives and breathes....
Review: Hayes's books, published in this very fine series of New York Review Paperbacks, are quiet gems, reminiscent of the work of Nathaniel West. I love the style of this book and its slightly better twin: My Face For the World to See. I love the attitude and the pose of the narrator. If you like the tradition of film-noir, you will love these books. The characters are deep, conflicted and confused: in other words, just like the 1950s itself.I deny the book a fifth star, only because sometimes Hayes's narrative becomes a bit confusing. In the end, though, it all works out. But, as I noted above, the other book published in this series, My Face for World to See, rings truer and somewhat "noir-er." Read both; this is real literature.

Reviewer: A
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great author
Review: Author has written for Alfred Hitchcock and the twilight zone. Also worked on Bicycle Theives. The way he writes about Romance and relationships has me feeling he’s a homie hopper but it is beautiful 50s nyc noir writing at its best

Reviewer: Gordon T. Osing
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The 50's revisited
Review: Love is for me the most insightful book i've ever read on the 50's.

Reviewer: Ray Ian
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Amazing conditionAnd the book is great

Reviewer: P. Newman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Aware that this slim novel by the little known Alfred Hayes, retrospectively hailed as a ‘noirish masterpiece’, has a lot to live up to, I entered it slowly and reverently.It is poetically written, taking us inside the feelings of a lonely middle-aged man recounting the love he lost many years before. It is a very real account of the highs and lows, particularly the lows, of a relationship never certain of its authenticity and fraught with dark emotional gulfs of despair. ‘In Love’ is perhaps not the best of titles, it is more of a Moon story than a Venus one. And while I can see how it is now labelled ‘noir’ it is more accurately likened, as one critic on the back cover here has described it, to an Edward Hopper painting. The cold loneliness of an empty New Jersey shore hotel out-of-season at night where lovers lay silently facing away wondering why they bothered to come all this way together. When the only response the man can get from the girl he thought was the love of his life is ‘What is it you want from me?’It’s admirable, it’s a masterpiece, but you have to know what you’re getting. It’s a bleak relationship poem rather than a noir thriller. I don’t regret buying it though.

Reviewer: bripol
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Alfred Hayes erzählt die Liebesgeschichte aus der nüchternen Sicht eines Mannes sehr einfühlsam, mit ausführlicher Beschreibung der Gefühlsnuancen (ohne Entblössung der sexuellen Kontakte). Im Dunst einer krimiartigen Umgebung bleibt die Spannung bis zum Schluss erhalten. Eine fabelhafte Erzählung einer Liebe.

Reviewer: Therese Wenger
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Gedankengänge und Reaktionsweisen der Protagonisten mit sehr viel Kenntnis der typisch männlichen, resp. weiblichen destruktiven Verhaltensmechanismen in Liebesbeziehungen dargestellt. Ein hervorragendes Buch

Reviewer: Lucie D
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Superb 'lost' gem. Supposedly one of Rachel Cusk's favourite books, there's a thread between it and 'Transit'/'Outline in my opinion. Clear-eyed, unflinching disintegration of a love affair. Hayes has a gimlet eye. A Hopper canvas in 60,000 words.