Amherst

This William Nicholson novel, based around an affair between Emily Dickinson's brother and the woman who would become the poet's champion, alternates between that narrative and an account of a young Englishwoman visiting Amherst to research a potential screenplay on the affair. Like many novels by fine English writers (Graham Greene's The End of the Affair comes to mind) and countless bad films, Amherst displays an almost infantile conception of romantic love. There is a quote, deep in the novel, that tentatively moves toward a more mature understanding ("We think there's someone out there who can make us happy, someone who'll make us complete, but that's not how it works."), but the person quoted follows the thought to a nihilistic conclusion. Nicholson is better that the overheated romance novel dialogue that he's put into this book.