In Love – Alfred Hayes (1953) 120 pages

This is the third novella in as many days that I approached with some reservations, so at least I can feel smug that I’m not letting my biases get in the way of exploring some interesting books 😀

The reason for my trepidation in approaching In Love was that I thought it could be a misogynistic self-indulgent justification of how upset a man is when the woman he objectifies in some way demands to be seen as an actual person. And it definitely did have moments of misogyny and self-justification, but these were recognised by the narrator so while I didn’t like him or his behaviour, I didn’t feel he was asking me to.

(There is domestic violence and sexual assault within the story – neither are portrayed in extended length and I don’t cover it here but I wanted to mention it so readers would know to avoid the novella if these are triggers for you.)

The novella is a monologue by a man almost forty, sitting in a bar talking to a pretty girl in her mid-twenties. He recounts the tale of his break-up with another woman, while she remains a silent interlocutor. (She’s clearly much more patient than I am. Or not listening.) There’s really not much more to In Love, but I found it pulled me along through its pacey, readable style and evocation of a particular time.

It’s a story between two nameless people who seem quite lost. They are both searching for something more, and for a while cling to one another despite knowing that it will not bring happiness.

“What have I done, he said, to be so unhappy, and yet not to be convinced that this unhappiness, which invests me like an atmosphere, is quite real or quite justified?”

He is a writer, quite successful but seemingly distanced and adrift from other people. She is younger than him, divorced from a man she married very young, and in New York having left her daughter at home with her parents. She lives in an area that scares her, in a flat she doesn’t tidy, and answers the door in an unwashed towelling robe:

“This house, the way she lived, was only a hasty arrangement, thrown together to cover a time in her life which she did not consider to important, and in which she did not feel any necessity for putting things into any sort of final order. The final order had not yet arrived; she was waiting for it to arrive.”

There is a strong materialist theme running through In Love whereby money is given great importance, but also recognised as not really bringing you what you most need. It’s a time of societal change: post-war, with gender roles shifting but before the contraceptive pill and the liberations of the 1960s. This compounds their uncertainty – both are searching or waiting for something without being able to name what it is. There is a yearning in both of them, that she at least believes might be filled by money.

She leaves the writer for someone much richer. He takes it badly, the break-up becomes truly destructive.

“I knew that she had wanted what I was not prepared to give her: the illusion that she was safe, the idea that she was protected. She had expected, being beautiful, the rewards of being beautiful; at least some of them; one wasn’t beautiful for nothing in a world which insisted that the most important thing for a girl to be was beautiful. Perhaps now, I thought, she would have some other things she imagined she wanted: the cocker spaniel, the nursery with the wallpaper that had little sailing boats on it and flying fish, the lawn with an automatic sprinkler, and somebody else to do the dishes.”

In Love definitely had the feel of Mad Men to it with the New York setting, the era, the attitudes and the somewhat nihilistic view. If you liked that series, then this novella is definitely worth your time.

“It was all like something in a bad movie, if they still did things like that even in the movies; but mostly it was like something in a bad life.”