Your Valentine’s Day reading list needs more than romance novels

While romantic love receives top billing on Valentine’s Day, there are many types of love. We asked contributors to write about a book that stood out because of an unexpected love story. They came back with tales of deep affection, from a long marriage to a passion for the movies. 

– April Austin, books editor

Unexpected love

The best literary love stories take characters by surprise. They’re especially wonderful when they involve a previously closed-off person opening up and becoming receptive to another living being, whether human or not. 

Such is the case in Sigrid Nunez’s “The Vulnerables.” Her narrator is a writer who finds herself more alone than usual in locked-down New York City during the coronavirus pandemic. She shares many characteristics with Nunez – yet the story is fiction. In the book, the writer’s friend asks her to