A reviewer wrote, the novel "is all about love until it's not." What do you think this reviewer means? In writing about the many faces of love, what statement do you think the author is making about love in general?

Leavitt writes about many different kinds of love, and as one early reviewer of Cruel Beautiful World stated, the novel "is all about love until it's not." What do you think this reviewer meant? In writing about the many faces of love, what statement do you think the author is making about love in general?

I love that statement! If you look at all the different types of love depicted in the novel you see that they all contain a core flame. But the flame isn't static, it grows and shrinks and stretches and sometimes gets snuffed out. People come in and out of your life, and it doesn't change your love for your children or your parents, but it does change over time.

A true statement about this book. Lucy and Iris certainly fell deeply in love and then suddenly it wasn't love any longer. For Lucy it ended tragically and Iris lived with it the best she could, until love came along again in the form of children. Love isn't static. It is influenced by so many factors in life, that we might say it is like the weather.

I think the book is all about love in its varying forms. I don't think it stops as in "until it's not." Even in love/hate relationships it continues.

I had the impression the author wanted to address the many forms of love in order to show the variances from the parental to the sisterly, as well as the lust that can so quickly morph into control and obsession - not to mention Lucy's transformation from adoration to frustration to fear. I wish Leavitt had more deeply explored William's evolution: with only Lucy's perspective of that relationship, we only have a glimpse through the eyes of an immature idealist who only saw part of the truth, and even then, too late.