The End of Romance

A big-hearted, wise, unceasingly buoyant novel about a woman who, after escaping a bruising marriage, theorizes that happiness is possible solely with the eradication of all romance--only to find a love that could change her life forever
Sylvie Broder was taught early to embrace joy. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who'd developed a system of thought that focused on enjoying the life they'd snatched back from Hitler, Sylvie grew up believing in the tenacious pursuit of pleasure. So, when she finds herself trapped in a suffocating, emotionally abusive marriage, no one is more unmoored than Sylvie herself. With enormous fortitude, Sylvie frees herself and turns to graduate school, determined to prove her new philosophy: Straight women will find true liberation and happiness only once romance is eradicated.
Sylvie uses her new-found freedom to enjoy men, but never to commit to one, priding herself in separating sex from tenderness. She doesn't sleep over, certainly doesn't cuddle, and never hooks up with a man more than once. Then she meets Robbie and Abie...and finds her philosophy sorely tested. A warm and gentle man, Robbie treats Sylvie with patience and enormous kindness, offering her the soft place to land she hasn't had since childhood. Abie, on the other hand, is passionate and dynamic, a man who challenges Sylvie, and with whom she finds herself constantly disarmed. With both men, she feels a deep desire that looks, worryingly, a lot like love.
Cleverly constructed, delightfully funny, and beautifully written, The End of Romance is an anti-romance romance novel that charts its fallible heroine's tumultuous journey to love and happiness with erudition and deep feeling-a story for anyone who, despite their very best efforts, has fallen in love, and wondered why.

Lily Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.