Love Story - Erich Segal

Love is an emotional gravitational force that binds the people in the universe. So many love stories have been told before and a lot of them are still in making but yet we don’t feel bored of the reading the same stuff again and again. Love is such a universal emotion that is so natural for every living being which makes the job of authors easy to make the people empathize with his protagonist.

“Love Story” by Erich Segal is one such novel which tells the tale of the most ordinary love story between a rich boy and a poor girl. The book is such a big success may be because of the date it was released first. I don’t think such normal down-to-earth, boy-meets-girl, they fall in love, parents oppose, run away and marry, struggle to face the harsh reality, mutual sacrifices, financial struggle, one of them suddenly getting a strange disease that takes them to death bed in no time, and the other takes care of him, and finally the lady dies leaving behind loads of memories for the gentle man which he can think and sob every other night, will work in present situation.

But this book in spite of being such an ordinary love story works mainly because of the characterizations, the complexities in the relationships (Barrett and his father), some smart description of psyche of the people involved in the episode, I-bug-you-and-you-bug-me nature of every other character in the novel. But I won’t definitely say that it is a great book. There is nothing new in the content. You can almost predict what happens next may be because we had read and seen lots of such love stories before though this book came before what we have seen and read.

The book moves in a steady pace and takes us in a journey through various emotions but finally lands in a serious path and makes us feel for Barrett who is going to loose his beloved. It is this make-you-feel-for-Barrett thing in the narration is the reason for its success. Anyway go for it, it will take less than two hours to read it. It is entertaining and quite moving but I won’t say it is too emotional and moving that makes the reader sob as quoted by various critics of international magazines.