Vivian Gornick has been developing a formidable dialogue between literature and life for years. The American writer harbors the conviction that reading is a form of self-knowledge, and that reading with the right perspective can help us understand how we became who we are and understand why the times in which we live are the way they are. In this book, Ella Gornick addresses one of her favorite topics, romantic love symbolized by marriage, and analyzes it as one of the key themes in 20th century literature. In a journey through the life and work of some of the authors that interest her most – such as Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Grace Paley, Richard Ford, Raymond Carver and Jane Smiley – the author argues that our world has changed and that the Love and marriage are no longer, in our time, metaphors that appropriately represent happiness and personal fulfillment.

With the same intelligence, honesty and acuity that characterize her famous book Fierce Attachments, and weaving a profound reflection that elegantly draws on both theoretical and experiential knowledge, Vivian Gornick offers us an extraordinary book that questions the supposed transformative power of love and reveals that this, "like food or air, is necessary but insufficient: it cannot do for us what we must do for ourselves."