Customer Reviews

The End of Romance: A Memoir of Love, Sex, and the Mystery of the Violin

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If we start to eliminate all the great writers who had less than perfect morals, we'd have precious little to read. If we rejected all the literary practitioners who committed adultery, we'd enjoy the company of very few.

Since writers are by nature and practice, cannibals, feeding on their observations and regurgitating them transformed by imagination, why of all people should we turn to them when searching for moral paragons?

So, yes, when a reviewer complains of being sickened by the writer's immorality in sleeping around while married, pardon me but this is perhaps the wrong book for such a refined sensibility. "Love" and "Sex" are mentioned in the title, so we have been warned. The faint of heart should retreat immediately to the safety of Kate Douglas Wiggin's "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."

However, Norma Barzman's "The Red and the Blacklist" makes much better reading than "The End of Romance," so read that one first.

Hummmm...I was so excited when I rec'd this book, but it was short lived. This book reads like a really bad memoire filled with conversations that go on and on and on about nothing but the relationship between the author and her cousin (which happened to be 25yrs her senior, and whom raped her at the young age of 14), along with 2 other females which played no important role in the story at all. The plot deals with finding the origin of the Guanari family, but there are way too many distractions along the way. The author's cousin is a sniveling complainer which drags the whole book down. And, personally, I was sickened at the lack of the author's morals. Along with her cousin, she has sex with several strangers despite being married. I did, however, learn a few facts about violins and the detailed process of how one is created. Learning always deserves something, so I gave it 3 stars.