BOOKS
Curator Reviews
John Irving
I was still too young to drive a car when I read James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room. The concept of a devastating and doomed love story - one that was also modern ' hadn't occurred to me. I thought nothing would ever compare to Romeo and Juliet, but Baldwin's story of "the night that is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life" became the saddest love story I know.
View John Irving's Top 10 Favorite BooksDouglas Stuart
Enough has been said about this book by better writers than me. This is Baldwin’s tale of desire, and the failure of that desire, set in 1950’s Paris. The abandonment at the end is heart-breaking. Lingering in my mind is the beautiful quote, “If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”
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