Savage Love

Savage Love, Douglas Glover

This book was not, in fact, written by Danny Glover, Hollywood actor and star of the Lethal Weapon film franchise. I say this because my husband doesn’t find it amusing when I refer to him as “Danny”, despite (or because of) my insistence in doing so.

Douglas-not-Danny actually grew up in Southwestern Ontario, not far from the north shore of Lake Erie, which may explain why many of the stories are also set in Lake Erie’s north shore. Savage Love is a collection of short stories divided into 4 sections; the Prelude, Fugues, Intermezzo Microstories, and The Comedies. The microstories are particularly fantastic. In some cases, he tells a better story in two sentences than most authors do in a full novel. Here is a quote from my personal favourite:

The second night, when it was clear that something was starting between them, Xo began to lie to Annabel, tiny lies at first, minuscule evasions, shy reticences.  It was not only that he wanted to impress Annabel but that he yearned to be in love with the sort of woman who would fall for the kind of man he pretended to be.

(Interesting side note and full disclosure: this quote comprises the entire microstory entitled “Xo & Annabel, A Psychological Romance”. Interesting side note part II: the title of this story is 15% the length of the story itself.) 

It’s actually embarrassing to even write a blog about a book that contains writing of this calibre. The only conceivable strategy for me at this point is to simply write down some words and hope they form coherent sentences. Or maybe random words would be a better (and easier) approach. Luck chair was walk tree up fork. Definitely easier. My husband has been trying to tell me for years now what a brilliant writer Douglas Glover is, and it turns out he was right (and now I’ll have to tell him so, which is just annoying). Actually, I’ll probably just raid the basement bookshelves for any other Glover books and let him figure it out for himself.

Rating: Buy it! The stories are disturbing, to varying degrees, as you might expect from a book titled “Savage Love” but the writing is worth it, and you’ll probably want to revisit this one.