'50 Shades is as sexy as a verruca!' Author Jemma Forte's top books about love
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY is nowhere to be found on best-selling author Jemma Forte's Valentine's Day list of best books about love from Caitlin Moran to Nancy Mitford
When first approached about writing this list it was originally suggested that I come up with my top ten favourite romantic novels. I love a good list so was up for the challenge but something was niggling me. Were there ten novels specifically of the romantic variety that I loved enough to recommend?
Only, often I find romance novels about as romantic as Valentine’s Day?
In other words… not very.
This in turn got me thinking about how my reading habits have changed over the years.
I fell in love with reading as a kid. I was that pasty, slightly overweight child who adults tried to force outside. ‘Go and play in the garden’ my mum used to say, when what she really meant was ‘Just go outside and move a bit. Do something physical. Try to be normal…’
I remember quite clearly staring into the garden thinking ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’
I was far happier sat on my bean bag, consuming the latest Enid Blyton, Judy Blume or Sue Townsend, my only nod to physical activity, the legwarmers, leotard and jazz shoes I was wearing. It was the 80’s ok?
(And please note well that I didn’t say ‘curled up’ on my beanbag. I have a strong, quite possibly irrational dislike of that phrase. Who on earth curls themselves up in order to read? Just sitting normally is fine and doesn’t make you look odd.)
Years later my penchant for a good legwarmer had died but my passion for reading was still very much alive.
During my twenties, a wonderful new world of fiction was emerging. Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones had exploded onto the scene in 1996 and changed publishing forever. Around this time I discovered lots of fantastic new female writers such as Marian Keyes, Lisa Jewell, Jill Mansell and Jane Green who I still adore to this day and who certainly don’t only write stories of a romantic nature even if that’s what their covers lead us to believe.
The term ‘chick lit’ was coined. A term which now feels rather lazy, as does to an extent being described as a ‘women’s fiction’ writer.
No one calls David Nicholls a ‘men’s fiction’ writer.
Aaaaanyway, publishers saturated the market with books with pink covers. Suddenly there was a glut of books aimed at young girls like me who yearned for their happy ever after. I lost count of how many books I bought where the heroine was single and totally pre occupied with finding Mr Right. She had a gaggle of cliché, white wine drinking, shoe loving pals and was searching for love in a haphazard way which she would eventually find at the end.
It was around this time I went off reading books which were described as ‘romantic.’ Apart from anything else I was discovering that the course of true love isn’t that romantic anyway. As it turned out love could be brave, joyful, painful, surreal, thrilling, obsessive, complicated and sometimes just downright exhausting.
And so, (and this is where I finally come back from my huge tangent and get to the point), wilful writer that I am, I asked if instead of writing a list of my top ten romantic novels, could I please write a list of my top ten favourite books about love? A small adjustment which makes a huge difference.
So here’s the list. And of course it’s totally subjective, due to it being based only upon the tiny percentage of books written that I’ve read. But each of the following is close to my heart for one reason or another and all feature that crazy thing called love.
And sometimes, they’re even rather romantic.
1. The One Plus One – Jojo Moyes
If you have read any of Moyes’ books you may well be wondering why I chose this one over ‘Me Before You’.
To be honest I wrestled with which one to pick. (In my head. No rolling about on the floor took place.)
In the end I plumped for ‘The One Plus One’ because I simply slightly preferred it.
The central protagonist is single mum, Jess Thomas, who has very real concerns about money.
I am a single mum myself and whilst certainly not on the bread line like Jess, I could relate to the weight of responsibility she felt to provide for her kids.
The book is beautifully written and in the most brilliantly old fashioned way you are rooting for her to get together with Ed throughout.
You are also completely involved with the relationship Jess has with her children and with her intensely stressful daily struggles.
Jojo Moyes writes unashamedly romantic, heartfelt, lovely stories about characters who feel real, three dimensional and interesting.
She also has that knack of making you visualise the story completely as she tells it and whilst this book is deeply romantic it certainly isn’t saccharine or schmaltzy.
No one wants that.
2. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
A classic by one of the giants of English literature, it is well documented that the novel was inspired by Greene’s own personal life.
This book draws you in instantly and is the kind of story you end up reading till 2 am despite the fact you’ve got work the next day.
It’s about passion, obsession, religion and jealousy and explores how love can make you feel quite mad.
The book is set in London during the Blitz in the 1940’s. Maurice Bendrix and Sarah fall desperately in love and have an illicit affair which Sarah breaks off one day, suddenly and without explanation. Two years later after a chance meeting, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
If you read it, it will come as no surprise to learn that this book has spawned two different movie versions.
The End of the Affair Trailer
3. How to be a Woman – Caitlin Moran
I LOVE this book.
It made an absolutely huge impression upon me. It changed my life to a degree and one day I shall force my daughter to read it.
This is the book that finally articulated so many things I’d been feeling for years but was worried about saying out loud. It’s funny, clever and, as far as I’m concerned, important.
But what’s it got to with love you may ask?
Well, a huge amount because it’s about loving being a female, about loving other women and about loving ourselves enough to insist that we would like to be treated the same as men in a perfectly reasonable, polite, fair enough kind of way. No great ask surely?
I am a feminine girl who really likes the male race so used to find it hard to admit that I was also a feminist and that certain things made me uncomfortable.
Caitlin took the time to explain everything though and now I will quite happily stand on a chair and say out loud that ‘I am a feminist’ and not worry what anyone thinks. (This will make more sense once you’ve read it.)
4. If You’re Not the One – Jemma Forte
Is it self- indulgent to include my own books? Possibly.
But, and here’s the thing, this is a list of my favourite books about love. Not a list of the best books ever written about love. Aha, a most excellent loophole. So I’m including it because this book is a direct product of an extremely complicated time in my life, so means an incredible amount to me.
When I wrote it I was in love, my marriage had broken down and I was facing a new era and a whole heap of change whilst trying to accept that my life had gone rather off- piste from the original plan.
The book is about a woman, Jennifer, who is having a huge mid- life crisis and finds out, having had an accident, what life would have been like if she’d stayed with three different men from her past.
I wanted to explore the notion that there’s no such thing as ‘the one.’ Not very romantic I know. But probably true.
I wanted to demonstrate how who you choose to spend your life with has a huge impact upon every area of your life. It affects where you live, your finances, the relatives you inherit, your social life; the list is endless.
However, within that idea I also wanted to write a relationship so totally all-consuming and passionate, that to the character’s involved it certainly felt like they were each other’s ‘one’. I wanted to describe how true love feels when it clobbers you over the head with full force. The type of love where you can’t eat, you’re in some kind of strange hormonal flux and the other person fills your head every second of every day.
It’s only a small part of the overall story but I hope Jennifer and Joe’s storyline achieves that.
5. The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
As much as I’m opposed to the rather lazy over used tag ‘chick lit’ that doesn’t mean to say I don’t enjoy reading light, witty, clever books about trying to meet Mr Right and love.
It all comes down to how they’re written and I can only imagine how much this book was adored back in the 1940’s when it first appeared. The fact that it still reads so well now tells you all you need to know about the extraordinary skill of the writer.
This book is timeless, full of energy and the humour and fun shine off the page. It’s also fascinating because it’s such a great account of what it was like to be an aristocratic female during this period.
Nancy Mitford was a blue blood and this book is largely autobiographical, something which is true of so many debuts.
Written during a time when upper class society girls were expected to ‘marry not fall in love’ this is about love and growing up, so something we can all relate to (even if we’re still trying to achieve that…)
6. Us - David Nicholls
I loved One Day. It’s a brilliant book (shame about the film) but ‘Us’ is even better.
It’s so exciting and wonderful when a much loved writer proves to their fans that they are absolutely not a one hit wonder. The word I really want to use to describe Nicholls’ writing in ‘Us’ is sophisticated. The characters in Us are fantastically nuanced, so real and so cleverly layered.
Us is about a man, Douglas Petersen, who deep down probably knows his marriage is over but doesn’t want it to be, so to an extent buries his head and pretends everything’s fine. He and wife, Connie, go away with their son to Europe for a family holiday that was planned before the cracks in their marriage appeared and the results are unsurprisingly interesting.
There is so much humour, pathos and tragedy in this book. Nicholls conveys perfectly how complicated relationships can be and how totally used to being with someone you can become.
Douglas may have taken Connie for granted for a long time and yet life without her is unimaginable even if their relationship isn’t everything it should be.
I found it really refreshing to read about a relationship which is decades old and stale but loving. After all, just because someone isn’t in love anymore doesn’t mean they don’t have deep feelings for that person or that they aren’t fond of them. Nicholls gets that life isn’t black and white. It’s grey and lots of other shades in between.
The only slight problem I had with this book was the title because for some reason I kept reading ‘Us’ as U.S, as in United States. The book has nothing to do with America and there’s every chance I was alone in this.
One Day Official Trailer #1 - (2011) HD
7. The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion
Don has Asperger’s and wants to find a wife, so applies his heightened sense of logic to the problem and comes up with a solution.
He writes a list of criteria, a questionnaire that he will pose to future dates in order to establish who is suitable and who isn’t. And yet, what transpires is that love ends up finding him. Not the other way around.
And isn’t that so true of life?
When single people are looking for love it’s so often a futile search, then, just when they’ve given up or stopped thinking about it, wallop, they meet someone.
This is such a humorous book. I love writers who deal with serious themes but manage to inject wit and levity into the story. Again I find this more honest than writing something incredibly downbeat because in my experience life is bad and good. It’s beautiful and terrible and humour is often the thing that keeps people going.
This is a romantic, modern, funny, interesting love story and I can’t imagine what a challenge it must have been to have written from the point of view of someone who has Asperger’s but it is done so successfully.
Don thinks very differently from most people which comes across in every thought that goes through his head. He is a wonderful character and one you find yourself cheering on throughout.
8. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
I was well and truly humbled by this extraordinary story because it’s a piece of great literature and the kind of book I could only ever aspire to write.
And yet, unlike some of the greats, it’s a total page turner too. It has you gripped from beginning to end and is also a fascinating insight into a way of life which is strange and unfamiliar to most people in the western world.
The book is set in war torn Kabul in Afghanistan and centres on two women. Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to marry deeply unpleasant Rasheed who is thirty years her senior.
Decades later during a climate of growing unrest, fifteen year old Laila is sent to join Mariam’s household and the ensuing story is how these two women form a deep bond and friendship.
The suffering the two women have to endure is thankfully something we will never have to experience ourselves but their love for one another is the thing you take most from the story. They have a deep friendship, as true as the bond between mother and daughter and as characters they are unforgettable.
It’s a heart wrenching, poignant story and one I can’t recommend highly enough.
A Thousand Splendid Suns trailer
9. The Bridges of Madison County – Robert James Waller
Set in Iowa in the 1960’s, this book is based on the eternal premise of ‘love at first sight’.
I read it in one sitting and the lust between the two characters (neither of whom are in the first flush of youth) was palpable.
As far as I’m concerned (and I know this might be an unpopular opinion) The Bridges of Madison County makes Fifty Shades seem about as sexy as a verruca.
The moment when Robert Kincaid meets Francesca, you can almost feel the charge of sexual attraction between them and just know their lives are going to be changed forever.
How could they not be?
Attraction and love like this is a primal and irresistible force.
It’s a simple, understated story told so very powerfully and will leave you wondering whether doing the ‘right thing’ is really for the best after all.
Of course the book went on to become a very famous movie starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep and both book and film have reduced many a grown man and woman (including myself) to tears.
The Bridges Of Madison County Trailer
10. When I Met You – Jemma Forte
This is my latest novel and I am very proud of it.
It’s about family, love and loss and I hope demonstrates that while most families these days aren’t the standard set up of a mum, a dad and two point four children, it really doesn’t matter as long as everyone’s driving force is love.
The Baxter’s are an odd bunch (aren’t all families?) and during this story one character who reappears into their lives, completely out of the blue, has a profound effect upon all of them.
Again, you could ask if it’s self- indulgent to include my own book but I would counter that by saying that when you’ve spent years dreaming up these characters it would be odd if they didn’t feel important to you.
If I don’t love them no one else is going to that’s for sure.
There are so many different types of love in this book, paternal, maternal, sisterly and romantic but I think the love that the mother finds in her heart towards the end is the greatest of all.
Selfless and kind.
Love comes in so many different forms but I hope that the ten books on this list have got many of them covered.
When I Met You by Jemma Forte (Harlequin, £7.99) is out now
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