Like Love

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A memoir-in-essays about unconsummated romance, Like Love tells the stories we tend to avoid, challenging our understandings of attraction, commitment, and parenthood, while reminding us of the transformative pleasure of desire.

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Praise

"A sharp eye, brave intellect, and satisfying writing make this worth a look even for those who don’t usually read essays."

Kirkus Reviews STARRED review

"In fourteen breathtaking essays, Michele Morano sheds light on romantic love in its many complex manifestations: romantic friendship, maternal love, the 'not wholly' innocent love between a teacher and a student even when no ethical lines are crossed, the love for a mother who breaks the child’s heart by leaving the family, the intense desire for contact that isn’t exactly sexual but almost is. 'Sometimes the vast possibility signaled by romance is all there is,' Morano observes, 'and that doesn’t diminish its power.' Her portrayals of the people who inspired these feelings are always astute and generous. A memoir-in-essays, this daring book expands our notion of what love is."

Kyoko Mori, author of Yarn; Polite Lies; and The Dream of Water

"Morano’s work is proof that a life spent in love is monumental, worth entire books, worth everything."Courtney Eathorne, Booklist

"If you have ever loved and lost, and if you can smile, wince, cry, laugh all at the same time you're ready for Michele Morano's brilliant new book about the perplexing forms and evolving definitions of love. And you're in luck: Michele Morano is a superb writer. Like Love is an essential book for us all."

Abigail Thomas, author of Safekeeping; A Three Dog Life; and What Comes Next and How to Like It

"Michele Morano's essays are funny, insightful, and just gorgeous, but I'm most impressed by her exquisite generosity. She keeps looking, and looking more closely, at her subject—attraction in all of its forms—daring herself to ask increasingly gutsier questions. I can't remember when I last read a book as openhearted as Like Love."

Ryan Van Meter, author of If You Knew Then What I Know Now

"Michele Morano's first memoir, Grammar Lessons, remains one of the best travel books I have ever read. Now Morano gifts us with Like Love, an intimate memoir of a different kind of travel: the sometimes shifting, sometimes blending borders of infatuation, disenchantment, friendship and love. Throughout her personal journeys, the always wise and empathetic Morano teaches us how to see—ourselves as well as others."

Philip Graham, author of The Moon; Come to Earth; Braided Worlds; and How to Read an Unwritten Language

Author Bio

Michele Morano is the author of the books Like Love and Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Essays, Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, and Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women. She lives and writes in Chicago.

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