From intense early lust to placidly watching TV in onesies – a nosy parker’s guide to the chemistry of love “True love is like the appearance of ghosts,” François de La Rochefoucauld thought, “which everyone talks about and few have seen.” The 1980s pop sensation Howard Jones asked: “What is lo-o-o-ve anyway? Does anybody love anybody anyway?” As both these authorities agree – not to mention those who maintain variously that it’s a “battlefield”, a “drug”, a “many-splendored thing”, or “a stranger in an open car who’ll tempt you in and drive you far away” – love is a tricky concept to get a handle on. Here is a cheery, chatty book with a smile/wince-inducing play on words in the title and a slightly misleading subtitle, offering to make things clearer. Laura Mucha usefully tells us, for instance, that the ancient Greeks used no fewer than seven different words for love, one of which wasn’t even Greek: _storge_ (for the natural affection a parent feels for a child), _eros_ (for romantic love), _ludus_ (for playful affection between children or casual lovers), _philia_ (for loving friendship), _pragma_ (for “mature love, including patience, tolerance and compromise”), _philautia_ (for self-love), and _agape_ (for “selfless, unconditional love that expects nothing in return”). Continue reading...
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