Love Stories for Grown-ups

Trillin, a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1963, spilled buckets of ink writing about family life, especially his optimistic, radiant wife Alice. Alice died in 2001 after a battle with lung cancer, but Trillin never stopped trying to impress her. The result is this moving tribute.

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Famous first line: “A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”

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Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for 28 years–and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other’s eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man “who should have married Ann Landers.” And what begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of eccentrics–and rediscover the magic of the road called life and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the ride . . . bumps and all.

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Famous line: “That night I fell in love with a voice. Only a voice. I wanted to hear nothing more.”

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Famous line: “No, I don’t think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.” —Rhett Butler to Scarlet

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This erotically charged novel set in Europe during WW II center on 15-year-old Michael. When he falls ill on his way home from school, he’s rescued by Hanna, a woman twice is age. The become lovers—then Hanna inexplicably diappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime.

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Famous line: “The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.”

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Listening to the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood is transformative, much like Proust’s madeleine, for Japanese businessman Toru Watanabe. Upon hearing the music, he recalls the poignant circumstances of his first love.

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