What a Character! Writing about Real People in Fiction and Nonfiction – a virtual book launch for Like Love by Michele Morano, with James Cañón

A memoir-in-essays about unconsummated romance, Like Love tells the stories we tend to avoid, about improper crushes and infatuations that go nowhere because the goal is less physical union than psychological provocation. Michele Morano interweaves adult episodes with adolescent stories of her family’s breakup, tracing the way we learn and revise our understandings of romantic love. Poignant, funny, insightful, and unsettling, Like Love challenges our understandings of attraction, commitment, and parenthood, while reminding us of the transformative pleasure of desire.

“The walls of Ben’s house were crowded with paintings, charcoal drawings, pencil and ink sketches. Most were gifts from friends around the world, artists who lived by their talents and gave plenty away. On each visit, Ben and I chatted through the rooms, the studio with its cool clay scent, the living room with layers of handmade rugs, the kitchen bursting with color: yellow walls, red cabinets, exposed pipes painted blue and green. Everywhere I looked were images worth lingering in front of, and Ben was always happy to lead a tour. In the dining room we talked about the shading of a portrait at eye level; on the stairway we leaned against the railing, admiring the work of a collage artist. Upstairs in Ben’s bedroom, shelves beside the window held abstract rosewood sculptures so smooth I couldn’t help touching them. Mosquito netting curtained the unmade bed, as if we lived in Zanzibar.”

—Michele Morano, Like Love, from “Ars Romantica (Or a Dozen Ways of Looking at Love)”