Book Summary and Reviews of The End of Love by Tamara Tenenbaum

The End of Love by Tamara Tenenbaum

The End of Love

Sex and Desire in the Twenty-First Century

by Tamara Tenenbaum

  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Published:
  • Feb 2024, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Told as a series of reflections on her personal experiences, this is a bold manifesto by a brilliant young mind on our contemporary understanding of romantic love and how the contradictions of inherited traditions and technology affect the way we build relationships.

Born and raised in an Orthodox Jewish community in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tamara Tenenbaum approached the sexual and affective habits of the secular world like an anthropologist discovering the ways of life of an unknown civilization.

Drawing from philosophy and feminist militancy, from conversations with friends and colleagues, and from an attempt to turn her own body and experience into a laboratory for both individual and collective reflection, Tenenbaum explores the challenges that young people today face at the start of their adult lives.

Tenenbaum examines the multiple dimensions of affection, from the value of friendship to the culture of consent, passing through motherhood as a choice or an imperative, desired and abhorred singlehood, polyamory, open relationships, and the workings of dating apps. Timely and illuminating, The End of Love celebrates the creative destruction of romantic relationships as we know them, and advocates for the rise of a better, freer love.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Argentinian journalist Tenenbaum makes her English-language debut with an incisive essay collection that shrewdly dissects the cultural pressures and ideals shaping modern notions of sex and relationships... Blazing with insight and equally grounded in personal observation and Marxist-feminist theory, these essays interrogate in lucid and persuasive prose how much has really changed for women from the oppressive past to the supposedly enlightened present. It's a feast for the mind." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"There are books that inquire, that make us think and ask ourselves questions, and there are books that are companions—this is one of the rare examples of books that do both things at the same time. The End of Love takes on many of the most disconcerting and complex problems of our intimate and everyday lives, and it does so with the perfect mix of modesty and ambition." —Revista Otra Parte (Argentina)

"Thanks to her lucid and pleasant perspective, Tenenbaum achieves her goal of transcending individuality." —El País (Spain)

This information about The End of Love was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Tamara Tenenbaum

Tamara Tenenbaum was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1989. She is a lecturer at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and teaches Creative Writing at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes, Argentina. She writes for Vice, La Nación, Infobae, Anfibia, and Orsai. In 2017 she published a collection of poems and in 2018 she was awarded the Premio Ficciones for her book Nadie vive tan cerca de nadie. Her first long-form essay, The End of Love has been published to great critical acclaim in Latin America, Spain, and Italy.

Carolina Parodi studied Literary Translation and Interpretation at Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is a regular contributor and translator for various online platforms including Sounds and Colours. She is based in London where she works in publishing.

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