Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts

by Neal Pollack and Michael Taeckens

A contemporary collection of true stories of seduction, heartbreak, and regret, Love Is a Four-Letter Word gathers essays that capture the dark side of love.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452295505
• ISBN13: 9780452295506
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Wonderful and a read for anyone who has relationships

this book is a must read for anyone who has been or is in a bad relationship (lets face it we have all been there) this covers all feelings, spectrums and attitudes on relationships..., this is a great read without being overly dramatic

Love in all its dirty splendor

Love and relationships are complicated. This collection of experiences covers lots of ground. The rending of the human heart here is extraordinary. You will laugh, cry, talk to yourself about similar happenings in your life, ditch your idiotic romantic ideals and question just about every assumption you have made in your life and then some. This book has some fine young writers who write with an honesty and openness that befits the enormously mysterious and baffling world of love and relationships. These are the things people do to each other and for each other in the name of love told with articulate black n' blue humor. Buy it, read it, read it to other people, give it to other people, read it again, buy it for other people. You get the idea.

Excellent reading.

This is excellent reading for those of us who have had many mishaps in dating/relating. It's essays written from the heart by really marvelous writers. It's good to read these stories about people who have gone through what we have gone thru and the trouble that trying to find a mate sometimes puts us through. It's a must read. After reading it, I am ready to do more dating with my eyes a little more open. This is a great read for reflection. A good one for tips is Sexy and Confident: How To Be The Dreamgirl Men Want, Have a Better Life and Improve Your Self-Esteem.

Love IS a four letter word.

This is a wonderful collection of essays on love that really resonated with me. We've all been there, done that and are still picking off the scar tissue. It's a great read for anyone who just, simply, wants a great read. You don't have to be bitter about love in order to identify with it because if you've been lucky, then this book can make you have more gratitude. I am going to put this one on my permanent bookshelf. Next up for me: I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti.

Love is Hard

Perhaps this book should have been called LOVE IS HARD, or maybe hard is the four letter word they were looking for. Or maybe LOVE SUCKS, maybe that's the word they were looking for, wait, that's five letters. When I was offered this book to review, I jumped at the chance because I thought it was about something else altogether, you see "Love is a Four Letter Word" is the title of a Bob Dylan song sung by Joan Baez years and years ago. I thought, without thinking, the book was going to be about them, one of them at least. When I got the package in the mail I was at first a bit disappointed, but I'd agreed to review the book, so that evening after dinner I dove in and was captivated by these short stories. These are not love at first sight, live happily ever after stories. Love sucks in the majority of them. It's hard in all of them. Many of them confuse Love with Sex. Many of them are about hurt, pain, loss. True love, though, I didn't find, but I was utterly fascinated by most of these true stories about how love is hard, not what you expect and for many not even what you want, or at least what you think you want.