I ravenously devoured the last book I read, gobbling the majority of it up in one train journey. So swept up in it was I that I accidentally let my (extortionately expensive) tea go cold. The person sitting next to me must have changed three of four times throughout that journey and I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t look up once. What do you call a person whose extroversion drains out of their body when a book is in their hand?
It was no surprise that this book found its way to me – I’m nothing if not a bandwagon-hopper. And Shon Faye’s latest book – Love in Exile - was a bandwagon I was itching to catch a ride on.
It piqued my interest for two reasons: the subject matter and the authorial perspective.
Firstly, the subject matter – it’s a nonfiction book about the nature of love and the state of romance. And that places it right up my street. If I’m being honest with you, I think about these subjects far too often. You could say that it’s my Roman(ce) Empire, an ‘at least once-a-day’ kind of topic.
The emotions tied up in romance - the language it evokes, the art it fuels, the power it wields - I find it all utterly fascinating. So, any book that’s analysing the romantic goings-on of a societal moment will catch my eye. Now, how about one written by a ludicrously talented transgender woman who ‘grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love is not for her’?
Oh, gosh. My interest levels are through the roof.
As I worked through the book, I realised that Shon’s experience of, and attitude toward, romance are completely different to mine; it’s like we’re looking at the same object but seeing different shapes, different colours. And that’s precisely why I wanted to read her book. I wanted to read about a topic I know so well from a perspective I don’t know at all. And it was fascinating, a true collision of the familiar and the unfamiliar.
It was like deciding to be a tourist in my own city, you know? Reading Shon’s words was like hiring someone to show me around my own postcode – letting them tell me about all the things I don’t see, the spots I don’t pay attention to, the streets I have no need to walk down. And Shon’s a good writer, a captivating tour guide – hence the cold tea and antisocial behaviour.
And then I get to the last chapter, entitled Agape.
I know that word, I thought. And I’m certain she’s not about to use it in the way I tend to use it – is she? Oh. She is. Shon Faye is about to round up her book on romance with a chapter about the love of God.
My jaw must have hit the train floor as I witnessed her tell her (very many) readers that there’s a spiritual function to romance. That part of the dating crisis we appear to be wading into is due to the spiritual dimension being pulled out of our understanding of love, making dating an inherently selfish endeavour. There’s a missing piece, she proposes, and it’s God.
Now, I don’t wish to misrepresent Shon, she has great trouble boxing herself into one particular religious tradition and/or understanding of God – I’m not planting a Christian flag in the ground of her book, here. But I must say, her reflections on the spiritual dimensions of romance can sit neatly alongside other Christian thinkers’ work on the same topic.