The Lover’s Dictionary

David Levithan knows teenage love. The co-author of the novel-turned-movie Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and editorial director of Scholastic has penned 11 YA books that explore this theme. The Lover's Dictionary, a novel composed entirely of dictionary-esque entries, is his first foray into adult lit. Levithan's language is fresh and innovative, using abstractions, from "aberrant" to "zenith," to relate the specific details of a boy-meets-girl narrative. The protagonist, a young guy living in New York, and his girlfriend, addressed throughout as You, meet online and move in together. The entries, each one almost a stand-alone poem, are interconnected by the voice of the narrator. The structure could easily read as cutesy, but Levithan avoids this through his surprising, subtle descriptions of the commonplace events of a new relationship—the first I Love You, the pivotal fight, meeting the parents. Where the sentiment is greatest, he is refreshingly understated (no teenage melodrama here), and the discovery of feeling in unexpected places is part of what makes this novel memorable. And just as dictionaries offer denotative meanings, the narrator employs personal references to evoke connotative associations. In The Lover's Dictionary, Levithan has created a nuanced lexicon of adult love.