About Love May Fail
• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper (June 16, 2015)
"It doesn’t matter how I got here. What I do with the puzzle pieces that are now in front of me—that’s what matters.
Save Mr. Vernon.
My three-word quest.
Why I’m here in this time and space.”
Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her ritzy Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds herself back in South Jersey, a place that remains largely unchanged from the years of her unhappy youth. Lost and alone, looking for the goodness she believes still exists in the world, Portia sets off on a quest to save the one man who always believed in her—and in all of his students: her beloved high school English teacher, Mr. Vernon, who has retired broken and alone after a traumatic classroom incident.
Will a sassy nun, an ex–heroin addict, a metalhead little boy, and her hoarder mother help or hurt Portia’s chances on this quest to resurrect a good man and find renewed hope in the human race? Love May Fail is a story of the great highs and lows of existence: the heartache and daring choices it takes to become the person you know (deep down) you are meant to be.
My Thoughts:
What’s not to love about this book? Once again, as he did in Silver Linings Playbook, Matthew Quick serves up a group of quirky, oddball characters, the kind of people many of us would hurry by if we were to pass them on the street, and challenges us to change our expectations and accept personality types that are vastly different than those we’ve come to expect as “normal."
I fell in love with Portia in the first pages of the novel, watching her find her fierceness amidst heartbreak and disillusionment. I sympathized with her about her mother, felt my heart sink when she returned from the glitz and glamour of her life in Miami to the New Jersey suburb she thought she’d left behind for good.
Her quest to connect with the one person who had been her champion in life, her high school English teacher, a man who is now broken in a myriad of ways of his own, proves to be the making of Portia Kane.
Quick takes the reader on a journey of compassion, of thoughtfulness, of understanding about people who carry hidden burdens most of us can’t imagine.
And isn’t that true of every one of us?
About Matthew Quick
Matthew Quick (aka Q) is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including The Silver Linings Playbook, which was made into an Oscar-winning film, and The Good Luck of Right Now. His work has been translated into thirty languages and has received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. Q lives with his wife, the novelist-pianist Alicia Bessette, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Find out more about Matthew at his website, follow him on Twitter, and connect with him on Facebook.
Purchase Links
Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read and review Love May Fail.