No More Silly Love Songs: A Realist's Guide to Romance By Anouchka Grose

Falling in love is a complicated, messy, mad endeavour - and staying in love is even worse. But even though we know that it will probably all end in tears (or, at best, tight-lipped tolerance) we continue to pursue it, believe in it, and lose sleep and friends over it. In this nimble and original exploration of love's hidden motivations and hideous manifestations, Anouchka Grose tries to get to the heart of its hold over us, along the way examining relationships between famous couples from Amy and Blake to Antony and Cleopatra, and drawing on personal anecdotes and medical case studies, as well as the love affairs celebrated in books, films and music, and the theories about love offered by philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and a spot of light neurobiology.