The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

I devoured this book in one sitting. Yes, it is a quick read—but it’s also a compulsively engrossing one.

Each page is a dictionary entry, a definition of a single word, in alphabetical order. But the definitions are idiosyncratic memories and emotions, definitions-by-example. And these examples are snippets from the life of a relationship--beautiful little snippets, as clear and specific as snapshots.

The snippets are set up in alphabetical order, not chronological order, so the narrative emerges like the image in a pointillist painting as the artist adds first ultramarine, then phthalo blue, then cadmium red, and so on—one image suddenly swimming into focus as others become temporarily more obscure, but what it’s being obscured by is detail that’s building up another section of the image, or linking one figure in the painting to another.

Which makes this sound very high-brow and maybe difficult to comprehend, but it’s not. The little “snapshots” are each so engaging, so clear, so poignant in small and large ways, that you just want to read the next one and the next one. And it’s no harder to understand than your own life, or a rambling story told by a friend who is rambling as they try to figure out where they went wrong in the most important relationship in their life.

If I told you absolutely anything about the narrative, I’d be robbing you of the joy of discovering it for yourself. I won’t do that. This book is compulsively readable and you can do it in an evening. Go do it. You won’t be sorry.