On Romance

Valentine’s Day, that most saccharine of holidays (sorry), is coming in two short weeks, and I’m celebrating this year by reading romance novels. I know, but don’t judge me.

I love genre, starting with the mysteries of Nancy Drew. But the nightly news isn’t easy to take these days—maybe it’s never been—then there’s that election coming, and I needed some cheering up.

Part of genre’s charm is its predictability. At the end of the mystery novel, the bad guy is either dead or in jail. At the end of a romance, the two people who were destined to be together are. There’s plenty of complication along the way (more dead bodies or ex-girlfriends, for example); and at the ends of both there is a confrontation where the truth is finally revealed: “I love you the way you are! Don’t change!” or “You killed him!”

In a mystery, while I’m glad the bad guy has gotten his comeuppance, it’s not often I want to go for a beer with the detective, even the ones I love like V. I. Warshawski or Kinsey Millhone. Maybe they scare me a little. Maybe they are too self-contained, too sure that the end they are pursuing is the right one.

But in a romance, I want to keep hanging out in that world drinking tea or margaritas with my new girlfriends. No one scares me. No one is bleeding to death chained in a basement. The characters talk about flowers and cupcakes and what it means to love someone and if you should give up parts of yourself to do that and, if so, which parts? (The answer, in case you don’t want to brave a romance novel, is no.) What about mothers-in-law and long distances, job changes, having kids? What about who makes dinner and loads the dishwasher and what to do when one of them is too tired for sex?

It's domestic and small. It feels manageable. In mystery novels, the question is often whether order is restored: moral order, usually. Locking up a criminal restores that balance: evil has been punished for harming good. But lordy, that takes a lot of energy. Who can manage that when there’s dinner to defrost, laundry wrinkling in the cooling dryer, and an incontinent dog?

Order is also restored in a romance. The world has gone off kilter because two people who love each other aren’t together. When they finally find each other, order returns. Happiness returns. Right now, I think if I could get some of that order in my life, it would be enough. Not that I need a new husband, mind you. I think it’s romance in general, which seems to fade from our vision as we age. Travel is romantic, until your flight is cancelled, your baggage delayed, and your hotel bathroom freezing cold. The art museum is magical, until there are a thousand other people elbowing you out of the way to see the Rosetta Stone and shoving their iPhones up to take a photograph. Making a home together is romantic until the siding starts to rot or the basement gets a leak.

Add to that all the darkness on the nightly news—hostages and refugees; missile tests and missile launches; stabbings, gun violence, car crashes, pedestrian deaths, and the crazy escaped bull running down the New Jersey Transit tracks, that aforementioned election, and the promise of some happiness, some lightness, at the end of a book is the band aid my poor heart wants.

How about you? What do you read to escape? I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Thanks for reading. (And Happy Valentine’s Day.)