This book weaves a magical, almost dizzying tapestry of stories and lives and loves. Each chapter is titled with an adverb that describes the way in which some character loves another (“obviously”, “soundly”, and “frigidly” were my favorites). But these are not syrupy sweet love stories, and they trigger no “Notebook”-like nausea; they are clever dervishes, whirling with words and faces, sometimes intersecting in surprising and entertaining ways. There’s hard love and hard times here, too, and overall the book is a creation of lyrical reality.