This Is a Love Story

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, mental illness, pregnancy loss, and rape.

A second-person narrator depicts Alice’s story. Alice is taking a fiction course with Abe. She fell in love with him the first time she read his writing. After class one day, she talks to him in his office, wearing the Chanel No. 5 perfume that her mother gave her. She tries not to sound obsessive but starts telling him everything she loves about his writing. He doesn’t respond to her flattery, so she starts asking questions about her own writing. He assures her that her writing issue isn’t the arc but the subject matter—she isn’t writing what she “want[s] to write” (65).

During the next class, Abe has his students write down a confession. Alice shares hers, but Abe still thinks that she’s writing around something. After class, she sits on her bed, reading Abe’s work and writing about him.

A few weeks later, Alice visits Abe during office hours and tells him that she’s finally working on the story she’s been wanting to work on. He says that he’s happy for her but seems distracted.