Top six unrequited loves in literary history

Jeff Somers is the author of the Avery Cates series, The Ustari Cycle, Lifers, and Chum (among many other books) and numerous short stories.

At the B&N Reads blog he tagged the top six unrequited loves in literary history, including:

Jonathan Safran Foer and Natalie Portman

Oh wait, no, there totally is a reason Foer’s new novel inspired this rumination on unrequited literary love. After Foer interviewed actress Natalie Portman in The New York Times, seemingly everyone remembered simultaneously that Foer’s marriage apparently collapsed because he fell in love with Portman while working with her on a film adaptation of his nonfiction book Eating Animals. The story goes that Foer told his wife about his decision to be with Portman before checking with Portman, who basically Bye, Felicia’d him. As far as cringe-worthy stories of unrequited love go, this one takes the cake. While a disintegrating marriage does feature in Here I Am, it’s not the focus of this sprawling, epic-scale novel—a novel that has a pretty good shot of making us forget all about Natalie Portman.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see John Mullan's ten best examples of unrequited love in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue