I think that's why people love these stories actually. People love to hear them, because the stories are all the same-the stories remind us of ourselves.
Maybe ending stories are all the same, too. "I fell in love with someone else" or "I woke up one morning and I didn't love him anymore" or "She died" or "He died" or any combination therein.
--From Margarettown: a Novel, by Gabrielle Zevin
I read the first Gabrielle Zevin that most do: Elsewhere. It won some awards and can be found in just about any bookstore. From that point on, I was hooked. I followed it up with Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, her other young adult novel.
I finally dug a little deeper and came upon her adult stuff: Margarettown and The Hole We're In. I just finished Margettown, her first published novel. Vastly different from her YA stuff, a bit more raw and just as engrossing.
She is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors of all time. Margarettown is a love story. The story begins with the narrator, "N." writing to his daughter, Jane, to tell her about her parents met and fell in love - how"N." falls in love with Margaret Towne, really.
It sounds so ordinary when I sum it up that way; I don't know how else to succinctly sum it up without giving away too much. But it is so much more than a simple love story. It certainly doesn't really read like a romance (except for maybe about the first five pages). The book is harsh in its portrayal of how love can be, how hard it is to really know a person. Everything about the book is engaging, from the beautifully drawn characters and the variety of narrators to Zevin's gut wrenchingly honest observations on how fickle, yet true, love can be.
