Customer Reviews

A Little Love Story: A Novel

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

it is a love story. Jake and Janet meet when she backs her car into his pickup truck at a doughnut shop. Janet has cystic fibrosis and her health is deteriorating rapidly. Jake, a carpenter and an artist, is determined to do all he can for her. Despite the difficulty of the subjects, it is often quite funny. There is a scene where Jake wrestles, in anger, with the governor of Massachusetts, which is not something you see all the time. The story is told with compassion and generosity and the characters are fully realized. We see good people do bad things and bad people do good things, just like every day life. The novel is wise, heartfelt and entertaining. Everything you'd want when you buy a book.

The Amazon review of this book does not do justice to it! The essence of the novel is not the events that occur in the lives of Roland Merullo's characters, but his retelling brings alive John Entwhistle and Janet Rossi and the city of Boston. (If only there were more John Entwhistles in the world!)
I picked up this book on Saturday and finished it early Monday morning. The characters are lovable and believable, made me want to escape back to Boston where I did my graduate studies, and captivated me for a few worthy hours.
I've had trouble, in recent years, finishing and even beginning books, but I could not put this book down. It was funny, warm, believable, and also terribly melancholic.
Kudos to Merullo!

I enjoyed this book, though I wasn't as transported as I had hoped by the characters and their ordeals. The main characters, Jake and Janet, have lived through so much, and you could feel the heavy weight of their losses through the whole book in a way that really resonated. That they found each other through an odd stroke of vehicular fate is cause for celebration.

While their affection for each other is apparent from Jake's first-person narration, I didn't see it, or maybe I didn't feel it as much as I'd have liked.

The plot picks up momentum nicely toward the end, but the book read as though the last twenty pages had been lopped off. I wasn't satisfied, at all, by Merullo's ending and I think that colored my overall assessment of the book quite a lot.

I think that Mr. Merullo is a lovely writer who is able to turn a phrase and use language in a way that evokes a very strong and exact feeling.

I thought this was a beautiful story, although at times the pacing didn't seem quite right. It took place in less than 3 months, I think, but it felt like the 2 main characters had been involved for a much longer time.

The ending was a non-ending which left me totally unsatisfied. There needed to be several more pages to give some closure to how the operation(s) turned out. It just stopped at a very odd point.

But overall, I liked the book and the characters and will certainly read more from this author.

Though one cannot usually judge a book by it's cover, this one was certainly intriguing....intriguing enough to make me pick up the book by an author I had never heard of. Within the first two paragraphs, the reader is made aware that the book is centered around a young man haunted by demons of a lost love, a man that is terrified to love again. However, love hits him when he least expects it and with a woman he would never anticipate loving so deeply.
Jake, a carpenter/portrait painter, falls in love with Janet, a woman having an affair with the govener, who happens to be dying of cystic fibrosis. The reader gets to watch this quirky couple experience love as they never have before, all while knowing that the shadow of a fatal illness is lurking in the background. This is not an ordinary love story. Merullo writes with a sense of emotion that most men simply can't seem to acheive. He connects with both characters, male and female, and allows the reader to feel the pain that both experience while falling in love with the other. Pain and love are not usually so closely related, but Merullo connects the dots in an amazing way.

"A Little Love Story" grabbed me and would not let go. Line after line struck some inner chord, and I found myself underlining passages and earmarking pages to come back to. It is a beautiful book.

I also suggest beginning it again after finishing it...The first chapter takes on new meaning.

I like the book. I think that the story is cute, fast paced and easy to get absorbed. There is the tiring plot of September 11, 2001 that I think could have been left out. The book is already sad enough without adding that extra drama. The thing that really bothered me is that there are parts where the author seems to have forgotten what he wrote about. In one part of the book he is talking about Jake's parents dancing in the streets of France on a family vacation (95). Later on when Janet is saying that she would love to go to France, Jake claims he has never been there(201). This is the sort of thing that should have been caught and fixed. It makes me feel as if the author stopped caring and assumed that the reader wouldn't catch the mistake.