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Customer Reviews of Endless Love

A beautifully written journey into obsession
This is a special jewel of a book. I always thought I had discovered it! I stumbled upon Endless Love Years ago, and I'm glad I got past thinking that the book might have any real relationship to the movie based on it. It is the story of a young man's obsession with his lover, and his relationship with her family and with his own. The self-centeredness of the main character is a bit reminiscent of the boy in "Catcher in the Rye", but all the other characters are also depicted with a clarity that made me miss them when I closed the book. Scott Spencer has an attention to physical and emotional detail that projected me into David's world, that made the characters (especially David and Jade's mother, Ann) distinct and interesting and real. And it gave me an understanding of mental illness that no other book, fact or fiction, has ever done.

I've since read all of Spencer's books, and this is my favorite of his and one of my all-time favorite books.

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Forget Brooke Shields!!!!!!!
Please give this book a fair chance-its unfortunate connection to the vapid, mindless Brooke Shields vehchile of the early 80's, as well as the saccarine pop ballad that served as its theme song, have unfairly sent this book into unsung obscurity and premature out of print status, despite the positive reception it recieved at the time of its first printing. Having suffered through the film many years ago, I was highly skepticle about reading the novel when urged to do so by a friend, but with its first line, it held me in its thrall with its lyricism and emotional pull. The prose is extraordiary, and Spencer skillfully takes what on the surface appears to be a truly ridiculous story and weaves it into a masterpiece that explores the power of love, obsession, sanity, family relations, and heartbreak. This is one of those truly rare finds that seeps into your very being as you read it and pulls you along with the characters on an intense journey through the exhaulatation and despair of human love. There are far too many complexities and layers to this story to surmise in a brief sypnopsis, but if the reader gives themselves to the book, the emotional punch packed on the last two pages is so devastatingly heartbreaking and magnificantly written that the occasionally unbelievable events and frustrations encountered along the way are well worth it. A modern classic.

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A magnetic read you won't put down
"Endless Love."

This book belies its sappy name - which is also a pun, once you discover the staying power of the male protagonist. "Endless Libido" might have been more apropos.

I read this four-hundred page book in two days; it's that good.

What we have here is the classic crossed lovers scenario painted with twentieth century prose. The sexuality is graphic, lurid at times, but never prurient: comfortably, [naturally?] sacred and profane at the same time. The style is pure with clear magisterial "voice." Part of the novel's charm is the reverence with which the raunchiest encounters and juiciest passions are described.

The author's first person narrative reads as conventional text directed to you, the reader; then, suddenly, the author-reader contract is violated as the protagonist slips into another true confession to his "endless" love. As you gradually allow yourself to participate in the customary conventions of a willing suspension of disbelief between author and reader, you continually remark the absolutely intense perspicacity and eye for detail of the "teenage author." The sustained subliminal effect of this (eye for sensual detail) is evocative of Oscar Wilde: you're fascinated, you identify, you quietly and vicariously revel.

Fundamentally, this is a passion play, a book of torture, for the deepest of the pains of hell is the absence of the beloved, and the protagonist has his share of this living nightmare. Additionally, I didn't (nor do) care for the ending. If you've read the book, you likely know why. If you haven't, no matter. (I began having "1984" flashbacks reading the finale - and that is a very soulless affair, indeed.)

"Characters develop," we hear tell. There's not much of that here. It doesn't matter, either. For what we have here is a valuable testament to the power of love.

Typical fare:
"My imagination of disaster tormented me as if it were a separate, vicious self. I longed to stop thinking of consequences, just as we must do when we dive from high boards, leap on our skis down steep sunblind slopes, or play any of the other daredevil games we've invented as metaphors for love. (150)

"Ann's grief was like what I had known of love: it increased itself; it wound its way to its very source. . . . This, now, was Ann as she really was: savage, helpless, eternal. . . . Her hold on me was contact at its most true and elemental: like two wolves huddling together in a blizzard, we grabbed each other and held on to life. (240-1)

"Of course when you love someone it is a tireless passion to experience their pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Of all the many perversions, the one I found myself most capable of succumbing to was voyeurism - as long as the object of my voyeurism was Jade. I never failed to be moved by her expressions of sexual pleasure. When we were first learning to make love and I had some trouble in controlling myself, she had to be careful to keep as quiet as possible. Even heavy breathing would speed my climax, not to even mention moans. Later in our life together, when we were making love three, four, and five times a night (for our passion grew with our prowess), Jade would sometimes become impatient for my final orgasm - which would come with more difficulty than hers, because of the natural differences between the genders - and to bring us safely home so we both might fall asleep she would feign groans of pleasure with her lips right next to my ear, or say my name. It wouldn't really take anything more than that." (313)

This is a book with a good heart.