Kirsty Gunn is an internationally awarded writer of novels, short stories, as well as a collection of fragments and meditations, and essays. Her latest book is Caroline's Bikini.One of Gunn's top ten books about unrequited love, as shared at the Guardian:
War and Peace by Leo TolstoyRead about another entry on the list.
Another book I go back to, rereading and finding yearning represented there by such quiet force and sense of elegy that sometimes I can hardly bear it. War and Peace is, alongside its many other stories, about the love of Natasha for her Prince Andrei. The way this is drawn out, rendering a love that seems to wear itself out with time and circumstance, is one of the finest piecesof writing about loss that I can think of. So subtle, like life, that we barely notice the size of its devastation until it has passed us by.
War and Peace appears among Terry Waite's six best books, Adrian Edmondson's six best books, Robert Newman's six best books, John Cleese's six favorite books, Kate Kellaway's ten best Christmases in literature, the Telegraph's ten best historical novels, Simon Sebag Montefiore's five top books about Moscow, Oliver Ford Davies's six best books, Stella Tillyard's four favorite historical novels, Ann Shevchenko's top ten novels set in Moscow, Karl Marlantes' top ten war stories, Niall Ferguson's five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best battles in literature, ten of the best floggings in fiction, and ten of the best literary explosions.
--Marshal Zeringue
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