Ten books to read this Valentine's Day

Come Valentine Day and it is time to celebrate love and the stories that revolve around them Love Story by Eric Segal the heartbreaking love story of the rich Oliver Barrett IV and Jenny Cavilleri is enduringly popular This list does not have the sugar sweet candy floss lsquoromanticrsquo stories Instead these are multilayered stories of illicit forbidden or obsessive loves of losses and betrayals and of the redemptive power of love1 Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieAmericanah is usually not classified as a romantic novel but it is Ifemelu and Obinzersquos powerful love story The beautiful and selfassured Nigerian Ifemelu heads for America where despite her academic success she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time Following a traumatic experience she breaks off with Obinze and when she returns home fifteen years later Ifemelu must face Obinze again2 Asylum Patrick McGrathStella Raphael is the wife of Max a forensic psychiatrist who has taken a job in a highsecurity mental hospital where she meets Edward Stark a talented sculptor who is confined to the hospital for the murder of his wife She falls in love with Stark and her obsession changes the life of her family and her own A powerful gothic novel3 Brokeback Mountain Annie ProuixThis short story has won many awards The story follows the lives of two young men Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist who meet in the summer of 1963 to look after sheep at a seasonal grazing range on the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming They form an intense emotional and sexual attachment and over the next twenty years as their separate lives play out thet continue to reunite for brief liasons on camping trips in remote places4 Giovannis Room James BaldwinA novella set in the 1950s Paris it tells the story of an American David who leads a dull and conventional life till he meets a beautiful Italian man He is engaged to a woman Hella and is confounded and tortured as he oscillates between his love for the two5 Love Illuminated Exploring Lifersquos Most Mystifying Subject Daniel JonesAs the editor of Modern Love for the New York Times Daniel Jones reads thousands of stories about peoples intimate relationships and in his book he distills his learnings from reading more than 50000 essays on love into ten aspects of love including pursuit destiny infidelity loyalty wisdom and vulnerability A brilliant piece of nonfiction6 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel Garcia MarquezFor five decades Florentino Ariza loves and patiently waits for Fermina Daza who breaks off her engagement to him abruptly and returns all his letters In those decades Fermina is married to the accomplished national hero Dr Juvenal Urbino and when he dies Florentino returns to her doorstep for another chance7 Madame Bovary Gustav FlaubertIn 1857 following the publication of this lsquoserializedrsquo novel Flaubert was tried for offences to morality and religion He was acquitted and the novel became an immediate bestseller The story of Emma bored with her provincial life and marriage her love affairs and subsequent decline that lead to her suicide is unapologetic and stark8 The Book of Gold Leaves Mirza WaheedFaiz sees Roohi a beautiful Shia woman across the courtyard of a shrine letting down her long black hair and waiting for a love story to sweep her away A hauntingly beautiful love story set against the backdrop of the tumultuous Kashmir9 Therese and Isabelle Violette Leduc translated by Sophie LewisWhen this novel about the love of two girls in a boarding school was released in France in 1966 parts of it were censored because of the explicit overtones of lesbian love Violette Leduc said this of her novel ldquo Im trying to express as exactly as minutely as possible the sensations of physical love Theres something here that a woman can understand I hope this wont appear more scandalous than the thoughts of Molly Bloom at the end of Joyces Ulysses Every sincere psychological analysis deserves to be heard I thinkrdquo10 Twice Born Margaret MazzantiniItalian Gemma decides to visit Sarajevo with her son Pietro it is where she had met and loved Pietrorsquos father Diego When they decide to escape the war ravaged Sarajevo Diego chooses to stay behind with Aska Pietrorsquos mother A brilliant novel of loss and misunderstandings that can ruin a lifetime and the redemptive power of love