Best love story in the universe of literature?

[Sweet-Annie]

Which one you think is the Best love stoy ever?

[Turk]

I didn't read all love stories, but Cengiz Aytmatov's "Cemile" was a great one. Aragon says "This s the greatest love story ever" for it.

[mir]

i don't know! :) . . though wuthering heights would be up there . . . maybe gone with the wind even though that's not really a love story. for quick emotion, though, i am ashamed to admit cheap novels give you a quicker fix than the deeper stuff. :blush:

what do YOU think is the best, annie?

[Sweet-Annie]

I don't know. That’s why I made this post, to read the best love story ever. It may sound stupid but I’m going through a romantic phase of my life :blush: . That’s the reason why I started reading Anna Karenina

[mir]

that's not stupid! :) well, you could always read Romeo and Juliet . . .

[pandora]

I think it is in the "Jane Eyre", and Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment"
consists the true love despite of the unbearable sitiations.

[Dry_Snail]

Of Love and Other Demons by gabriel garcia marqez is amazing...well i dont know if it is greatest of all the love stories...but i think it surpases this number game!!

[mir]

I think it is in the "Jane Eyre", and Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment"
consists the true love despite of the unbearable sitiations.

:eek2: really???!! i'm halfway through Crime and Punishment and i haven't even heard of a love interest yet! wow, maybe it isn't boring! :p

good writing, just slooooow . . .

[optimisticnad]

i think its 'optimisticnad and the mirror.' :lol:

[cuppajoe_9]

A Tale of Two Cities is certainly a contender.

[Sweet-Annie]

Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
Crime and Punishment
Of Love and Other Demons
wuthering heights
Cemile

Wow..my list is getting bigger. :)

[Mark F.]

The love stories in Hemingway's "A Farewell To Arms" and "Fiesta, the Sun Also Rises".

[mythologist43]

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a very good story because it`s not just about one couple, it describes other people`s relationships. But Jane Eyre isn`t that bad, either.

[beetleb]

This story really made me consider what love means...

[S1NN3R]

I'm going to have to throw in a vote for The Great Gatsby. Ok, so that's a bit of a weird addition to the level of love stories previously mentioned, but I happen to prefer this type of story. I'm a bit too jaded to fall into the idea that love conquers all or even the idea of noble sacrifice for love. To me, Gatsby is real, it's more true to life, it's more poignant if only because of the loss. When I read most love stories, I can almost write the next page before I read it, and then I do read it and I just get this feeling of "well, yeah, of course they're together now, it's been obvious since page 12". With Gatsby, after the "events" (I don't want to just toss around major spoilers for those who've not yet had the chance to enjoy it themselves), I actually felt emptiness, I felt a very real loss. That ingrains itself on my mind more than "happily ever after" could.

Though, now that I think about it, Gatsby might be surpassed by Dantes and Haydee, I'm not sure.

[tidee98]

these are good stories if you are in the mood for a romance :)

Judith McNaught -- 'A Kingdom Of Dreams'

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss -- 'A Rose In Winter'

someplace to start.

[WriterAtTheSea]

...indeed those shine, but let us not forget good old Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice!" I mean, all us ladies NEED a Mr. Darcy, right?

[malwethien]

I'd go with:

-Wuthering Heights
-Persuasion (Jane Austen)
-Pride and Prejudice, of course...But I think if you want romantic...Persuasion would be a better read....
-Love in Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
-Like Water for Chocolate - if you want romance and hungry at the same time :)

[la rose]

right Pride & prejudice is soo wonderfully Story

& also we can't ignore this masterpieces "Romio & Julliet"

thx for this Topic

[Turk]

Come on guys, some says Crime And Punishment or Farewell To Arms etc. are love stories, oh... If you think that, you didn't understand those books. Many novelists and short story authors uses love-relatinship between 2 people in their stories, but IT'S GENERALLY BECAUSE TO BUILD DRAMATIC BACKGROUND OF STORY.

I still insist Cemile of Cengiz Aytmatov is really perfect example for a "love story". Not a social analyze, not a dramatic structure for background of story. It's simply a simple love story.

[grace86]

Sweet Annie -

I loved Anna Karenina...where are you in the story?

My favorite love story was Precious Bane by Mary Webb. A little less known but I thought it was wonderful. Tear jerker at times.

Good luck with you search.

And Mir: Don't be ashamed of being in a romantic phase or anything....what girl didn't fall in love with Darcy and the like ;)

[kmwmn]

I would also vote for Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre. BUT I like love stories that don't have happy endings best. So I would go with For Whom the Bell Tolls and, one not mentioned so far, Jude the Obscure.

[Sweet-Annie]

grace86

I'm in the part in which Anna reveals to her husband she's having an affair. :eek: When I first read I couldn't believe it!

[grace86]

Annie - In the carriage on the way back from the races after Vronsky has that accident?! Yeah that was a pretty intense scene...it all goes downhill from there!

[Sweet-Annie]

Yes!! that part!!!... oh my god....no!!! :( I want them to stay together!!!...no mattter how lame it sounds...

[superunknown]

"Fiesta, the Sun Also Rises"
I wouldn't expect that one to make the list. They're all empty, unfulfilled relationships based around one woman who's got everyone by the balls. Not exactly the ideal of love.

[grace86]

I was just saying that the whole story of Anna Karenina just takes a turn after that part in the book...sorry I don't want to spoil anything for ya!

[downing]

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

[hamiltonj]

The very best love story ever, in my opionion, is Their Eyes Were Watching God--by Zora Neale Hurston--this book is so brilliant and honest in its portrayal of a love between two people--it hurts to read the end.

[Bysshe]

Wuthering Heights, definitely. In my opinion, it's a much better love story than Jane Eyre....

[Woland]

King Lear, though it doesnt concentrate on romantic love

[whitetree]

in a movie"love story"
it said that love means you have never ever to say you are sorry.
but the best love story I think it happened in the movie "Forrest Gump"
in this movie it made me understood that love is always giving ,no matter what is the place,what is the time and who you are

[Nightwalk]

Willa Cather's "Coming, Aphrodite!".

http://www.online-literature.com/willa-cather/2115/

[amanda_isabel]

wuthering heights, definitely.

i also liked 'the secret life of a schoolgirl', rosemary kingsland. i guess the beginning seemed so real, but hey, it is a memoir, so the whole thing is real. i'm quite familiar with kingsland's guy in the story so i was surprised to learn about their romance.

[orra]

Personnally I believe that the greatest love story ever known is one of the masterpieces of Master William shakespeare which is Antony and Cleopatra. It is a love story btw two empires. Mark Antony is one of the triple pillar of Roman Empire and Queen Cleopatra who was considered as the queen of queens.There were two great people and love was their doctrine. Although it is considered as a tragedy but it remains the best love story written.
Romeo and Juliet is also a great love story but it was between two young people and two families.

[ThruMyEyer73]

Jane Eyre and The Notebook,
both are tear jerkers!

[classicsgirl]

Definetley Wuthering Heights!!

[carina_gino20]

Persuasion had a mellow and sweet note to it...Frederick's letter to Anne was one of the best love letters i've read in a novel.

a more intense love story would be Wuthering Heights...

just a few quotes from WH..

"Two words would comprehend my future, death and hell--existence, after losing her, would be hell." ---Heathcliff

"If all else perished and he(Heathcliff) remained, I should still continue to be..." ---Catherine Earnshaw

[Mary Sue]

Jane Eyre
and
Pride and Prejudice
are two titles that come to mind.

[Idril]

I have a hard time really embracing Wuthering Heights as a great love story because their love was so incredibly destructive and seriously unhealthy. It seemed to be more like obsession than love, more about posessing something than a desire to share a life together.

I have a hard time coming up with a love story I can really feel good about, most of what I read is full of tragedy and dysfunction. Anything written by Jane Austin is a pretty good bet since romance is what she does best, Janye Eyre is good. The romance of Eowyn and Faramir in LOTR is nice as is the romance between Carrot and Angua in the Discworld series. :lol: :lol:

[hamiltonj]

I so agree with the destructive nature of the romance--it almost seems to be an allegorical tale of something larger Bronte needed to discuss--and she chose this novel as her forum--resulting in a brilliant and unforgettable piece of women's literature.

[Alana]

I agree, Jane Eyre, Romeo and Juliet, and Gone with the Wind are some of the greatest romances out there. I recently got the romance bug too, and found Portrait of Jennie, by Robert Nathan, to be an amazing love story. It's short, but good. It's a different portrayal of romantic love. Maybe not the "best short story in the universe of literature," but a good one to read when you've read the others.

[carina_gino20]

I have a hard time really embracing Wuthering Heights as a great love story because their love was so incredibly destructive and seriously unhealthy. It seemed to be more like obsession than love, more about posessing something than a desire to share a life together.

i agree. some people wud not like this but, at times, it came too close to exasperating.

[Mrs Dickens]

The greatest love stories I've read are -

Romeo and Juliet
Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice
A Tale of Two Cities
Dracula (Mina and Jonathan.)
The Constant Gardener (I know its a modern story but I loved it!)
Beauty and the Beast

That's all I can think of at the moment.

[CourtnyG]

My favorite love stories:
Pride and Prejudice
Gone with the Wind
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights

Regarding Wuthering Heights. I always felt that Catherine and Heathcliff had destructive personalities. I never felt it had anything to do with their love for each other. They would've been just as cruel and miserable had they never met each other. I never thought the nature of their love was the problem. The problem was they were both selfish, stubborn, and cruel, and they both had way too much pride. These were character flaws that caused their problems, not the nature of their love that caused their problems. Due to their isolation, their past, and their selfish and stubborn personalities, they were not able to get over this love. Maybe it's just me. I can never think of love as a bad thing. I can never think of love as being unhealthy, it's only when unhealthy people feel love that love sometimes appears unhealthy.


Oh, and I absolutely love Timothy Dalton's portrayal of Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester. I just wish he would've played Mr. Darcy too. He would've made a wonderful Mr. Darcy.

Courtny

[grace86]

I've yet to read Wuthering Heights...now I am a bit hesitant on what kind of story I will take it for when I start it. I know that (I think I said this somewhere else) that when the movie came out when my dad was in college...him and a guy buddy went and saw it at the drive in and they both ended up in tears...food for thought.

[CourtnyG]

grace86,
You must read Wuthering Heights at some point. It really is a beautiful story, but also very sad (and I love the way the story is told). I have to be in the mood to read it though because it does depress me a little. I never liked Catherine. I could not force myself to feel compassion for her, but Heathcliff makes me very sad. I think it might be because Catherine's flaws seemed to be who she was, but Heathcliff's flaws seemed more a matter of circumstance. Catherine should've been a better person. I can't blame Heathcliff for turning into what he turned into. That sounds like a double standard though. I can't think of a novel I've read that caused me to examine it's characters as much as Wuthering Heights.

Courtny

[rgdmalaysia]

Wuthering Heights is the obvious choice but Victoria by Knut Hamsun I find even more moving.

The end sequence which is related through a note to the hero after the heroine has passed away brings tears to my eyes.

[rmd]

I was just going to mention Victoria when I saw your post. For a different kind of love story by the same author, you can't go wrong with Pan, the story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn's ill fated love for Edvarda.

Another love story, which has probably been already mentioned, is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Not a happy love story by any means.

Also Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman (what, another lieutenant?) is a love story and a good one with not one but two endings.

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy may have been mentioned.

For an unconventional love story that is way more than a love story, Voss by Patrick White is well worth a look. The love affair between Laura Trevelyan and Johan Ulrich Voss is unusual to say the least.

[Susan Sonnen]

without a doubt, Wuthering Heights

[novelsryou]

when the movie came out when my dad was in college...him and a guy buddy went and saw it at the drive in and they both ended up in tears

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[ivette]

I'm reading Anna Karenina at the moment and I must say I really like it.
I think that it is the best love story I've read so far.
Gone with the wind didn't impress me that much although I liked it. It has too much historical facts for me and I found them boring sometimes.

[rgdmalaysia]

I was just going to mention Victoria when I saw your post. For a different kind of love story by the same author, you can't go wrong with Pan, the story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn's ill fated love for Edvarda.



Pan is a great one and that's a good point but slightly different in the respect that the male and female characters are more or less unsympathetic whereas in Victoria the characters are sympathetic and you feel their pain

[Juliamour]

My favorite romantic novel is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. It's not a classic example of romance, but it is romance I relate to. The resistance between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon just seems real to me. It also helps that Dominique and I have eerily the same personality, so I suppose I relate to this book very well. I just love the bizarre tension in this book from attraction and al the jumbled up emotions that go along.

[puffin]

In terms of books about love I’d strongly recommend Wharton’s Age of Innocence. It looks not only at various people in love but also the social and/vs personal needs that men have of women and the social and/vs personal needs that women have of men. While set in the late 1800’s I found it remarkably relevant to today (especially around men and the romantic/life choices they make, women’s choices and needs have changes so much it was a little less relevant there).

If you can find it, New York Stories is also excellent, mainly on the consequences of love.

I’d recommend Wharton to anyone who has a love/hate relationship with Austen. Wharton has so many of Austen’s strengths (storytelling abilities, characterisations, opening up life in another age) but she does not have Austin’s almost complete support for the social rules of the day. Wharton definitely challenges the roles, responsibilities and pressures on both men and women.

[amalia1985]

Wuthering Heights is the obvious choice but Victoria by Knut Hamsun I find even more moving.

The end sequence which is related through a note to the hero after the heroine has passed away brings tears to my eyes.



I loved that book!!!! I'm so happy I found someone who liked it as much as I do!!:)

I am not innovative here. To me, the best love story is Romeo and Juliet

[LadyWentworth]

I don't really know exactly how to pick just one. I guess I perceive each love story differently. This is how I would categorize them:

Most Obsessive: Wuthering Heights

Most Depressing: A Tale of Two Cities
(The Phantom of the Opera - Leroux made Erik quite pathetic and sad at the end)

Most Passionate: Jane Eyre

Most Perfect: Persuasion

[Dori]

From what little I've read (it seems I am not as well-read as others when it comes to love stories), I would say Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are good love stories. They're probably not the best though. I believe Dostoevsky's short story "White Nights" is a definite contender if we were limited to short stories. Romeo and Juliet still remains the best love story from what I've read.

[samg3008]

Oh definately that of Pride and Prejudice - the tension between mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet is immense at times.
But also the notebook - nicholas sparks, although it is a bit cheesy, it is brilliant!