It’s that
time of year again – happy valentines ladies, gentlemen and others. I figured
I’d write a list of my top five romantic couples in literature because I like
lists and also romance. Here we go.
5. Jaime and
Circe Lannister – A Song of Ice and Fire
by George RR Martin
The
ruthless, incestuous, infanticidal Lannister twins may seem like an odd choice
to begin the list, but there’s something truly touching about their devotion to
each other. It’s a mark of GRRM’s skill as an author that he manages to
humanise even the most repellent characters, including his main villains.
Everything Jaime does, he does for Circe – in his interactions with other
people he’s practically sociopathic, but when it comes to her, though he never
lets his guard down completely, we see him show genuine tenderness. Circe is
decidedly less romantic, but she is clearly devoted to her brother (wow, that’s
a creepy sentence to type). Admittedly, the whole twincest thing is gross as
fuck, but when you look past that, the love that these two have found in a
harsh and unforgiving world is touching.
4. Celie and
Shug – The Colour Purple by Alice
Walker
Celie’s
relationship with her husband’s lover Shug Avery is one of my favourite
literary romances, in large part because of the way that Celie’s character
develops throughout their storyline. Walker’s decision to focus on the
oppression of queer black women at the hands of black men was groundbreaking
for its time (so much so that the film adaptation glosses over Shug and Celie’s
relationship completely), but even ignoring that, Walker’s ability to make her
characters feel like real people, and grow like real people, makes it
impossible not to be drawn in by these two.
3. Rod and
Carl – Cleansed, by Sarah Kane
“I love you, now. I’m with you, now.
I’ll do my best, moment to moment, not to betray you. That’s all. Don't ask me
to lie to you.”
If that’s
not the most heartfelt and honest declaration of love you’ve ever read, I need
to know what you’ve been reading. A play set in a concentration camp may seem
like an odd place to find a moving romance, but despite all the torture and
death Sarah Kane’s third play (like all her work) is fundamentally about love. There’s
the love of the illiterate boy Robin for Grace; the love Grace has for her
deceased brother; even Kane’s Mengele, the sadistic guard Tinker, loves the
Woman who appears to him in a coin-operated booth (it’s a very odd play). The
couple that really touched me, though, were Carl and Todd, who Tinker tortures
in order to find out the limits of love. Sometimes, the most beautiful stories
bloom out of the ugliest of circumstances.
2. Lyra and
Will – His Dark Materials trilogy, by
Phillip Pullman
It had to be
in there, somewhere. The books of the His
Dark Materials trilogy were among the defining novels of my childhood, and
with good reason. Beneath all the philosophy and grand inter-universe conflict,
there’s a heartbreaking love story between the two young protagonists, who are
eventually forced to part, as neither could survive in the other’s world. It’s
been more than a decade since I read these books, but Lyra’s words to Will have
stayed with me to this day:
“After we die we’ll find each other,
an atom of me and an atom of you, and we’ll cling together so tightly that
nothing and no one will ever tear us apart.”
The Amber Spyglass, the final part of the trilogy,
remains the only book to have ever made me cry.
1. Jess and
Ruth – Stone Butch Blues by Leslie
Feinberg
Stone Butch Blues is an astonishing book – a lyrical,
relatable and often brutal story of a young person coming to terms with their
sexuality and gender, starting in pre-Stonewall New Jersey and ending in the
AIDS era. Feinberg based much of the book on hir own life, and it shows. Stone Butch Blues has the immediacy of
first-hand experience. Reading Feinberg’s most well-known book, you get the
feeling that sie really lived the experiences sie was writing about, and that
sense of personal reality is part of what makes the relationship between Jess
(the semi-autobiographical protagonist) and Ruth so involving – they feel like
real people, people you might know. Another reason Stone Butch Blues is at number one is that Jess goes through so
much shit over the course of the book that there’s a genuine sense of relief
once they meet Ruth, and finally start to have some good luck. It’s a
conflict/reward dynamic that never feels forced, which is something a lot of
writers struggle to achieve. At the end of the day, the thing that makes Jess
and Ruth’s story so touching is Feinberg’s skill as a writer – hir mastery of
plot, prose and characterisation come together to build up a moving portrayal
of two people finding solace in a world full of hardship and violence. That’s
why Stone Butch Blues is at the top
of my list.
