The Law of Loving Others
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
“Kate Axelrod’s atmospheric, intense book captures perfectly the heady feeling of being on the edge of adulthood, when the abstract concept of ‘love’ starts to have real and sometimes terrifying meaning and consequences.” – Emily Gould, author of Friendship
“THE LAW OF LOVING OTHERS . . .
Hours after Emma returns home from boarding school, she realizes that her mom is suffering from a schizophrenic break. Suddenly, Emma’s entire childhood and identity is called into question.
COULD NOT BE DISCOVERED BY REASON,
Desperate for answers, Emma turns to her boyfriend, Daniel. Will he love her even if she goes crazy too? But it’s the lonely, brooding boy Emma meets while visiting her mother at the hospital who really understands Emma. Phil encourages Emma’s reckless need for hurt and pain in the face of all this change and she is soon caught in a complicated spiral of loss and mistrust.
BECAUSE IT IS UNREASONABLE.”
In the span of just one winter break, Emma’s relationships alter forever and she is forced to see the wisdom in a line from Anna Karenina: “The law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
A beautifully grounded coming-of-age novel, THE LAW OF LOVING OTHERS demands that the reader accept the main character, Emma, for who she is, while also creating deep sympathy for all that she is going through.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventeen-year-old Emma returns home from boarding school for winter break to find that her mother is having a psychotic break her parents never told her that her mother was diagnosed as schizophrenic years ago and has been taking medication for the condition since college. Emma's mother's subsequent institutionalization is like an earthquake in Emma's life, threatening her romantic relationship with her boyfriend Daniel and her own sense of security. Emma worries whether she, too, is genetically disposed toward schizophrenia and starts down a path of self-harm. Heavy on Emma's internal monologue, debut novelist Axelrod's prose is careful, intelligent, and contemplative, and the past-tense narration gives the impression of an older Emma looking back at a painful, but critical episode in her teenage years from a safe distance in the future. As Emma cheats on her boyfriend, turns to scarring her body, and seeks connections in whatever ways she can, her actions never feel anything but realistic in this reflective and incisive exploration of the far-reaching effects of mental illness. Ages 14 up.
