Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love (Paperback)

This is a collection of stories that dwells on the dark side of love, a side that exists but is not portrayed in fiction enough. We all know about the story about a boy meeting a girl and falling in love and everybody living happily ever after. But what about the reality 90% of the time? What about the aching longing, the desperate realisation that you just don’t measure up to the dreams of the girl of your dreams? The story Violoncello in this collection is the closest approximation to the sense of hideous realisation you get when you realise that no matter what you do, no matter how you try to change yourself, you will never, ever enter into the thoughts of that girl you like, except as a slight irritant, an annoying distraction from the bigger picture of the story that is her life.

People often complain that characters in Dan Rhodes stories are not likeable, as if you should only read a story about a character you find yourself liking. On that logic, there would be no satire, no black comedy, no horror stories, no Alan Partridge, no League of Gentlemen… The characters in this collection are pathetic, they’re fools wasting away because they can’t get their head round the idea that that girl they’re obsessed with just doesn’t care who they are, but what’s wrong with that? So in Violoncello the main character turns himself into a cello in a desperate, doomed attempt to be near the girl who is not interested in him. In the beautiful Carolingian Period the professor looks on the beautiful young woman and marvels at her beauty, but he can never go near her.

In most of these stories, the main character is usurped by others in his vain attempts to gain the affection of the girl of his dreams. In a story that will be depressingly familiar to all who have nursed a teenage crush on a classmate, the girl, sometimes bafflingly, inexplicably, chooses someone else to be the object of her affections. The main character is left as a bitter piece of flotsam, dreaming his bitter dreams and impotently raging. I have never come across such an accurate depiction of the sheer pain of rejection and unrequited love.

I recently read an interview with Dan Rhodes and in it he suggested that a sense of anger often drives him to write. And this collection should be approached with anger. It’s a catharsis, to cleanse you of the anger of modern life, the sense of injustice at a world in which everything seems wrong, and love never seems possible. It’s a great thing that the collection ends on a positive note with the story Beautiful Consuela, that suggests that true love is possible. With this story, the catharsis is complete, and you can get back to your life, secure in the knowledge that somebody somewhere understands the things you’ve been through and can express it beautifully.

This is pure gold – no question.