Top Ten Tuesday: The Greatest Love Stories

Honestly people, I love Tuesdays. First of all because they are not Mondays, secondly because it means that it is time for Top Ten Tuesday! Once again, let me mention where this wonderful meme started - with the ladies at The Broke and the Bookish at www.brokeandbookish.blogspot.com/

This week the theme is the greatest love stories in fiction and what a great theme it is. My boyfriend and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day but I will celebrate it with this little list. I'm mixing and matching love stories here from older and more recent fiction because if I only went for the really great ones Shakespeare and the other greats would take up all the space :-)

10) Sophie von Kuhn and Novalis from "The Blue Flower" by Penelope Fitzgerald. This love is so strange in a way because it is hard to understand why intelligent, academic Fritz/Novalis falls for the silly Sophie. However, his love is so strong that one cannot but be moved.

9) Tristran and Yvaine from "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman. While Tristran pines for the cruel Victoria, he somehow manages not to notice that he is falling for a fallen star. A love story that you will read with a smile.

8) Ariel and Irrylath from Meredith Ann Pierce's Darkangel trilogy. Hands down one of the best love stories in fantasy and a very heart-wrenching story about unrequited love.

7) Emma and Knightley from "Emma" by Jane Austen. As Emma spends all her time planning for others to fall in love and marry, Knightley silently loves her and tries to guide her away from her worst ideas.


6) Anne and Gilbert from the Anne of Green Gables series. From school sweet hearts to doting parents, this is true love.

5) Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." as said by Rhett is one of my favourite quotes - Scarlett, however, often manages to make me really annoyed. They do light a fire in the romance department though!

4) Cassandra and her first love. I will not reveal more here, read Dodie Smith's masterpiece "I Capture the Castle" and be captivated by the sensitive narrator as she stumbles into her first love.

3) Romeo and Juliet have to be on the list - Shakespeare set the standard for the tragic love story when he wrote this play. They are an iconic couple and I love reading Shakespeare's play for the beautiful words! I know some people may not agree but I loved the Romeo + Juliet film with Claire Danes and Leonardo Dicaprio.

2) Jane Eyre and Rochester from "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte have to be on this list because their love story shows how love can hurt but also how love will overcome even the greatest challenges. If you haven't read this classic, do so now.

1) Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy are the couple that come out on top on my list. No matter how often I read "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, I will always have a knot of worry in stomach that those two will not realize that they are made for each other. If I could be the leading female in any literary love story, it would be this one!

Review: "The Blue Flower" - Blossoming Love

I found this book of one of the lists of "100 Best Novels by Female Authors" and decided to give it a try - and I am really glad I did because it is a beautiful and moving little story, written by Penelope Fitzgerald who won the 1979 Booker Prize for the novel "Offshore".

"The Blue Flower" is the fictious story of the historical figure Friedrich von Hardenberg, who found fame as a writer and poet under the name Novalis. Hardenberg was born in 1772 in Germany and the family though nobility were very poor so even though Hardenberg was highly educated, he still faced having to work for a living. In "The Blue Flower" we meet the 22-year old Hardenberg as he is having to make choices about work and his future but the most important storyline in the book is about his meeting with 12-year old Sophie von Kühn. It is love at first sight for him and maybe for her as well?

Sophie is a young girl, not even mature for her age, of little education and little beauty. However, this does not seem to matter to Hardenberg who loves her passionately and when Sophie is 13 years old, they get engaged. It is around this love that the story revolves and the characters evolve.
And actually the characters are a very important part of this story. I soon came to feel that I knew Hardenberg's and Sophie's family. The strong sisters Sidonie and the Mandelshloh who take charge when their mothers give up, the little brother the Bernhardt and Erasmus who looks up to his brother Hardenberg. Their voices are so strong and they provide a great cast for this novel.

Fitzgerald's prose is beatiful, she really manages to conjure up Germany in the time of romanticism where science was still young and the students philosophised and discussed the great matters in life. I could almost smell the dirt and taste the beer, hear the horses. The prose is what stood out for me because it captures these star-crossed lovers - the educated gentleman and his somewhat dimwitted childbride. It is lovingly fun, subtlely pointing out the follies of man while revering the love of Hardenberg for Sophie von Kühn.