Storystorm: Lovestorm Edition

For this week's Storystorm, I've been tasked with writing a Lovestorm. Initially I had big ideas for the feature—a list of love stories that I can't live without. But there was one problem: love stories aren't exactly my style. I tend toward the dark and depressive. So I polled the audience, and by “audience” I mean “the other fiction writers in the MFA program at UNH.” There's still a bit of dark in this list (what's love without a little loss), so hopefully these stories will help you ring in this Valentine's Day, whether you're a romantic or a realist.

“Love and Hydrogen” by Jim ShepardRecommended by Jay, our resident body builder fiction writer. About the story he says, “I won't spoil the ending, but it is the Hindenburg. So keep that in mind. But it made me cry on a bus.”

“Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot” by Robert Olen ButlerRecommended by Andrew, who says, "This isn't a love story—it's anything but that!—but it is a story about love, about what love can do to us, how pathetically desperate it can make us act and feel, how it can be here one moment, disappear the next, and leave us wondering if it was ever really there at all. It's dark, it's sad, it's funny. I love it."

“The Cheater's Guide to Love” by Junot Dí­az.Recommended by Alyssa, who says about the story, “This story resonated with me because you watch Yunior's heartbreak slowly, and Dí­az makes you feel for this serial cheater in his faltering attempts to move on with his life after his fiancee breaks it off with him, which he's never fully able to do.” Even cheaters need love, kids.

“Fialta” by Rebecca LeeAmy, our Barnstorm editor-in-chief, summarizes the story in this irresistible list: “unrequited love, love triangle, architects.” How can you not read it now?

“Mule Killers” by Lydia PeelleRecommended by yours truly. If I've learned one thing about love it is that it is not about chemistry or lust or attraction. It is about chance and trust and commitment and time. You won't realize it until the end, but this is the kind of love that Peelle writes.

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"Responsorials" by Joe Weil and Emily Vogel (Pt.3)

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