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A Little Love Story: A Novel
 
 
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A Little Love Story: A Novel [Hardcover]

Roland Merullo (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)


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Book Description

August 9, 2005
In A Little Love Story, Roland Merullo—winner of the Massachusetts Book Award and the Maria Thomas Fiction Award—has created a sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious tale of attraction and loyalty, jealousy and grief. It is a classic love story—with some modern twists.

Janet Rossi is very smart and unusually attractive, an aide to the governor of Massachusetts, but she suffers from an illness that makes her, as she puts it, “not exactly a good long-term investment.” Jake Entwhistle is a few years older, a carpenter and portrait painter, smart and good-looking too, but with a shadow over his romantic history. After meeting by accident—literally—when Janet backs into Jake’s antique truck, they begin a love affair marked by courage, humor, a deep and erotic intimacy . . . and modern complications.

Working with the basic architecture of the love story genre, Merullo—a former carpenter known for his novels about family life—breaks new ground with a fresh look at modern romance, taking liberties with the classic design, adding original lines of friendship, spirituality, and laughter, and, of course, probing the mystery of love.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Merullo, author of the Revere Beach series, starts out with a hoary cliché: Jake Entwhistle, on the one-year anniversary of his girlfriend's death, goes out for a doughnut, and his '49 Dodge truck gets smashed in the parking lot by cowboy-booted, 27-year-old Janet Rossi. Chemistry wins out over a series of first-date pratfalls, and Entwhistle, a handsome, successful painter, finds himself smitten. Rossi, however, has cystic fibrosis, and Merullo does his best work in the deceptively lighthearted chapters that follow the lovers trying to shed their romantic baggage on top of dealing with Rossi's illness. Entwhistle must overcome his jealousy over Rossi's affair with the governor of Massachusetts (she's still his aide), and he must also finally mourn the late Giselle (an attendant on the flight that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11). Rossi's debilitating disease quickly sends her into a tailspin; Jake tries to pull together lung donors and a "psycho-genius" doctor for an operation that could save Rossi's life. Merullo counters the cardboard morbidity and overdetermined incidentals with considerable emotional depth, making this a solid romance. (On sale Aug. 9)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

The reviews of A Little Love Story are remarkably uniform: nearly everyone who’s read the book remarks that this novel shouldn’t work. It should crash and burn on the shoals of cliché. Janet and Jake’s romance should seem cloying, and readers should suffocate in all the emotion. But Merullo, best known for In Revere, in Those Days (2002), masterfully steers clear of those potential pitfalls. He produces a grand, moving story, believable characters, and a graceful dialogue that, taken together, reminded a few critics of Erich Segal’s 1970 classic, Love Story. A Little Love Story will rekindle the reader’s trust not only in love but also in love stories.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books (August 9, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1400048672
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400048670
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,840,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roland Merullo was born in Boston and raised in the working-class city of Revere, Massachusetts. He had a scholarship to Exeter Academy and graduated in 1971, attended Boston University for two years, transferred to Brown and graduated from Brown in 1975, then earned a Master's there--in Russian Studies-- in 1976. Roland has published ten novels and four books of non-fiction, and given talks at hundreds of universities, schools, bookstores, and other venues. He currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife Amanda and their two daughters and can be reached via his website: RolandMerullo.com.

His best-selling novel, Breakfast with Buddha, recently went into its 11th printing. Like Golfing with God before it, and American Savior after it, Breakfast with Buddha treats questions of philosophy/spirituality from a multi-denominational viewpoint and with a healthy dose of humor. The novel is provocative, not irreverent, and it has become a favorite with book clubs all over the country. It was based on an actual trip Merullo took from New York to North Dakota, most of it in the company of his wife and daughters. Golfing with God has just been optioned for film by Gemfilms.

His new book, The Talk-Funny Girl, is the story of a teenage girl in rural New Hampshire who escapes an abusive home life in a most unusual way. It follows a theme that can be found in almost all Merullo's books: a person overcoming some past trauma, whether that be the stress of war, illness, divorce, addiction, or early abuse.

Several old favorites--Leaving Losapas, A Russian Requiem, Revere Beach Boulevard, and Revere Beach Elegy, have just been reissued from AJAR Publications, in print form and as e-books. AJAR has also brought out Roland's small book of writing advice, Demons of the Blank Page.

GOLF WRITING

Merullo has a side-speciality, golf writing. His articles and columns appear frequently in Golf World Magazine, and his golf books include GOLFING WITH GOD, THE ITALIAN SUMMER, AND PASSION FOR GOLF.

 

Customer Reviews

31 Reviews
5 star:
 (15)
4 star:
 (7)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (31 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant, September 20, 2005
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This review is from: A Little Love Story: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is the first review I have written for Amazon. I always check on the reader reviews before I buy a new book, since I put more value on the thoughts of normal readers than I do on reviewers, and am always more interested in what the readers get out of the book than I am in a retelling of the story line, so my comments will be accordingly. This book is special. My husband picked it up in the library and brought it home. Knowing we share the same taste in books, I picked it up and began reading it and was taken in immediately by its wit and wisdom and depth of character, if not its somewhat offputting subject. That being said, it is a wonderful read, and when I recommend it, I try to avoid saying what it is about, since the story line could be construed as a depressing one, while the writing takes the subject to a different dimension. It is a sleeper.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a love story for grownups, September 19, 2005
By 
D. Payne (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Little Love Story: A Novel (Hardcover)
I read this in two sittings and found it difficult to put down. The protagonist, Jake Entwhistle, a carpenter-artist, is on the outs with mainstream American society in the way that most sane people are these days, and his voice is full of charm, humor, whimsy, decency and wisdom. His love affair with Janet, who is dying of CF, is a beautifully sustained pas de deux between two people committed to "brutal honesty," and grasping every sweetness they can as they come face to face with the mortality that awaits us all. The book is tough, funny, likeable and wise. Though it deals with 9/11 in a somewhat glancing way, it's one of the first accounts to do so with an emotional maturity that feels digested and of a size and quality appropriate to the aubject matter. The story is also an utterly compelling read. One of the best books of the year.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Oprah would love A LITTLE LOVE STORY, September 26, 2005
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This review is from: A Little Love Story: A Novel (Hardcover)
I have just finished reading A Little Love Story and thought it was great. In fact, I couldn't stop reading because there is a wonderful emotional honesty and intensity to Roland Merullo's writing, and because I really was involved in the struggle to save Janet. Then I heard Roland speak at a local bookstore, and the same simple honesty and decency again came clear. I think this book would be perfect for Oprah now that she is doing "living" authors again -- the book is entertaining, inspirational, gripping, AND part of its profits will go to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
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New York, Doctor Wilbraham, State House, Doctor Ouajiballah, Joe Date, Apple Meadow, Doctor Vaskis, Red Sox, Janet Rossi, Charlie Valvoline, Beacon Hill, Storrow Drive, Madison Road
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