Mar 012011
 

David Levithan’s Argot of Arousal,

A review by Darryl Whetter

 

The Lover’s Dictionary
David Levithan
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 9780374193683

Frontispiece, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Colburn and Bentley, London 1831

Mary Shelley and her progeny know that novels need more than just bone, muscle and skin; they also require that elusive spark of life. David Levithan’s interesting but patchy novel The Lover’s Dictionary definitely isn’t another atrophied non-story du jour. In places, the skin of prose also glows with ruddy life. Its familiar but relevant romantic trajectory gives it a strong, able skeleton with cheekbones of infatuation, flirting hands and a breadth of shoulder willing to take the weight of romantic cohabitation. Despite these strengths, however, the novel’s dictionary structure leaves the body of this story unfinished, as if constructed during fitful labour shortages. Between the islands of gleaming flesh, too much glaring white bone is left exposed to the air.

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