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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Even our uncomfortable or difficult relationships are steps along the way to being more capable of giving and receiving love, February 20, 2008
This review is from: How They Met, and Other Stories (Hardcover)
It began in a high school physics class. Bored and in search of distraction, David Levithan combed his physics textbook for romantic notions. He assembled them in a story called "A Romantic Inclination," which he gave to his friends for Valentine's Day. They liked it so much that each year he wrote them another story. This tradition led to his first novel and ultimately to HOW THEY MET AND OTHER STORIES, a collection of stories about love.
Best known for his positive, normalizing portrayals of teen relationships --- regardless of sexual orientation --- Levithan's stories focus on those longings that are the common denominators for the human heart. HOW THEY MET features matchmakers, chance encounters and broken hearts, in addition to the different kinds of love that exist between family and friends.
The collection begins with "Starbucks Boy," a hilarious story about the all-too-common experience of crushing on the neighborhood barista. Readers will no doubt identify with the self-aware tone of Levithan's narrator:
"Now, it has to be one of Starbucks's more brilliant marketing strategies to maintain at least one completely dreamy guy behind the counter at any given shift. This guy is invariably known as Starbucks Boy to the hundreds of regular customers who have a crush on him, and the glory of it is that he always seems just accessible enough to be within reach, but never accessible enough to actually touch.... He is, unlike most beautiful people you've ever encountered, friendly --- and you honestly believe it's not because that's a part of his job....[you] think that the way he says `good morning' or 'have a good one' or 'here you go' to you is a little different than the way he says it to anyone else. Or at least that's the hope."
HOW THEY MET is built upon moments as identifiable as crushes across the counter. Levithan has never needed earth-shattering events or severe trauma to get across the drama of ordinary life. But the best stories in this collection move beyond the happily-ever-after moments of cute introductions and push into the hungry places that make us long to belong.
Behind many of the stories here is an awareness that we are defined by who and how we love. Nowhere is this made so clear as in "Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat," in which the narrator defends her choice to remain alone:
"When I realized I was into girls, it was scary to let go of all the things I was supposed to be and all the things I was supposed to want. It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing. That was hard enough. But that was nothing --- nothing, I tell you --- compared to the idea that I could let go of the desire to have a girlfriend....Talk about something that had been ingrained. I wasn't letting go of love or sex or the idea of companionship. I was just rejecting the package in which it had been sold to me. I was going to say it was okay to be alone, when it felt like everyone in the world was saying that it wasn't okay, that I had to always want someone else, that the desire had to fuel me."
Who and how we love also extends to our family narratives. My favorite story in the collection, "The Princes," isn't just about a dancer choosing between two possible suitors. It's a family romance that explores the way families define themselves and express their love for one another. The most touching moment in the story is not when Jon discovers the identity of his true prince; it's when Jon's brother makes a stand about including Jon's boyfriend at his Bar Mitzvah. Levithan includes his own family romance in the book with stories about how his grandparents met. "I am here because of love," he writes, which makes us hope we can all claim the same.
David Levithan is a true believer when it comes to love. The stories in HOW WE MET are a testament to his faith that we are all created by love, sustained by love, and saved by love. Even those stories with less than happy endings suggest that even our uncomfortable or difficult relationships --- whether it is having one's partner leave for college or taking the wrong girl to the prom --- are steps along the way to being more capable of giving and receiving love.
--- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Many-Splendored Thing, January 24, 2008
This review is from: How They Met, and Other Stories (Hardcover)
When David Levithan was a junior in high school, he found himself bored in physics class, so he started flipping through his physics book and "finding as many romantic notions as possible." He started writing a story, and, by February, he was done. He shared this Valentine's Day treat with friends, and they asked for another. A tradition was born: he wrote a new short story every year for his friends and family.
How They Met, and Other Stories by David Levithan is more than just a collection of eighteen tales written by the same hand. The author prefers to call them as "stories about love" rather than "love stories," and I agree. This anthology is a many-splendored thing, a testament to different kinds of love: first crushes, the love of family, coincidental meetings, set-ups, break-ups, and make-ups. The Memory Dance celebrates a marriage of forty years, while Lost Sometimes (previously released in the 21 Proms anthology) has someone looking for more in his relationship.
As he did in The Realm of Possibility, Levithan has once again captured multiple voices and made it seem effortless. He offers first-person, second-person, and third-person narratives, with protagonists ranging in age from their teen years to their twilight years.
Starbucks Boy was my favorite piece in this collection, with its sweet story of a six-year-old who knows what (or who) is best for her new baby-sitter. The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes and What a Song Can Do also vied for my affection.
The stories are not connected, and yet they are: By their underlying currents. By what they envoke (empathy and sympathy, tears and laughter) in readers. Each story has a different piece of the heart; when put together, they make for the loveliest of puzzles.
How They Met, and Other Stories is recommended for teens and adults.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, February 6, 2008
This review is from: How They Met, and Other Stories (Hardcover)
The stories about how people meet and fall in love are as diverse as the couples themselves. From blind dates to chance encounters, the stories of "how we met" always seem to intrigue us.
HOW THEY MET, AND OTHER STORIES is the latest book by David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy). It is a collection of eighteen short stories about love, longing, and even lust. This wonderful group of stories includes brief crushes, relationships with happily-ever-after endings, and tales of love gone wrong.
Among the stories: being fixed up by a six-year-old; two strangers meeting on a plane; coming out to your prom date; even the author's own story of how he credits his existence to a piano, a jeep, a college, and the Army.
What makes this collection unique is that every story isn't about love being realized. In some cases, the potential only exists and even passes without materializing.
No matter what your experience with love so far, you are sure to find hope, and maybe a hint of your own love story, within the pages of this book.
Reviewed by: JodiG.
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