Whiplashing Love

I finished Norweigan Wood by Murakami, at last. It was hopeful and sorrowful and beautiful and left me feeling full. How lovely it would be to have a boy like Toru tell you he loved you "enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter". As lovely as a siren song.

Siren Song - Bat for Lashes

On a quiet wet Friday afternoon a while ago, I was watching Northanger Abbey and the romantic escapades of heroine Catherine, wondering how every Austen girl ends up in the true hero's arms, when I unearthed an article by Jenny Dickinson in the October edition of Elle, called If You Like Pina Coladas.
Did you know that humans are not in the 3% of mammals considered naturally monogamous? Marriage is, as so many men and women across the ages have argued, against our nature, even more so with the nature of 21st century life. But I agree when she suggests "that's the very reason modern love is braver, more romantic even than that of the Jane Austen era".
I come from a family with a majority of successful matches and marriages, but who's to say that this kind of intuitive sensibility is genetic? Unfortunately, happy endings are not part and parcel of your inhertitance. But with such an overwhelming experience of real romance, willing compromise and happy family, I hope I will always be the kind of girl who has faith in finding someone and holds out for something special, for "snatched kisses and licking each other's ice creams on Cornish beaches" - it sounds so simple, but I can't imagine life without that kind of love.

This Modern Love - Bloc Party