How They Met, and Other Stories

This book made me cry in public. Twice. It makes room for every kind of love--for people who love each other through words, through music, through memories, through mysterious inexplicable physical connection, fictional, nonfictional, gay, lesbian, straight, young, old. I like that it doesn't invalidate young love and accurately portrays the way it feels to be in love for the first time, before you knew all the mistakes you were going to make and all the ways you would make a fool of yourself.

Short story collections all by the same author can often have some deeper thematic links, but this one is right out there on the surface: these are all love stories. Stories, yes, of how people met, but also of how they came apart, or came closer together, or found something deeper in their love, or found it wouldn't work. And that was really most appreciated, because man, that many stories of people meeting and falling in love and everything being rosy in a row would be pretty hard to get through.

But Levithan manages quite a solid mix of these, with some funny ones (the Alumni Interview was probably the one that got the most laughs out of me, but the Good Witch worked as well), some poignant ones (Memory Dance; The Number of People Who show more Meet on Airplanes), and ones where some people work it out, and some where they don't (and that, I'm not telling you which is which). And with a mix of ages, as well, although there's a preponderance of high school to early college stories, as perhaps befits an author who usually does YA books. And that works pretty well, too, from the trying to figure out even how to work with your feelings perspective that shows up in a few of them.

I liked that a large number of them had homosexual pairings, and I liked still more that in a decent number of cases, it wasn't clear what the genders of the couple in question were. There are definite coming out issues that show up in a few, closeted relationships, and that sort of thing, and those are handled quite well as well, usually. The first few were all gay or lesbian couples, and I was glad after a while to have at least a couple of straight ones, for the fleshing out of the concept, but I'm not going to complain about lots of gay characters when they're well written.

There are a couple of less-good stories in here, or ones that I think were meant to be more stylized that I wasn't sold on, and while I can usually see what the intention was, it did mean I didn't love everything. Still, for the first David Levithan book I've read that he wrote just by himself, I don't think this was a bad pick at all, and I'll probably be trying to read more of his stuff soon. Starting from here, if you haven't read anything of his before, could work, too, although I might try one of the novels. But if 75-80% of a short story collection really clicks, then you're getting your money's worth. show less

In his Author's Note, David Levithan explains that this collection of short stories sprang from a tradition of presenting short stories to his friends and family on Valentine's Day. As a result, we have How They Met and Other Stories, which even contains the original Valentine's Day story, "A Romantic Inclination."

The greatest strength of this book is that David Levithan presents to the reader all the different aspects of love, and none of it is sappy or overly sentimental. We are given love between boys, love between girls, unrequited love, everlasting love, love for a brother, love that won't last, and love from a distance. We are shown how love just happens, and how it takes work. Sometimes we love the wrong person, and sometimes it show more couldn't be more right. It's so very rare to find an exploration like this, that helps us explore everything that love can mean.

My personal favorites in the collection are "The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes," "Starbucks Boy," and "Princes." Even if you can't, or won't, read the whole book, I really suggest taking a look at these amazing short stories. show less

Collections and anthologies usually include selections a reader will like as well as some he won't and this collection is no exception. Levithan's work is always interesting, insightful, and self-revelatory, even when he writes about heterosexual relationships and his own life and growth shows through especially strongly here. Of course, I know little about him, so perhaps that claim is too broad, but it is based upon how finely tuned and deeply nuanced much of this material is and upon Levithan's own disclosure that many of these stories were actually written even before he had decided to pursue writing as a career. What is most revealed in these stories is the experimentation with form and format that a budding author necessarily must show more go through on his way to becoming fully developed as a writer.
The stories are often straightforward, sometimes confusing, occasionally bewildering, and yet always engaging.
I like Levithan's later work and appreciated reading his earlier collection of his as a sort of window into his development as a writer. show less

I usually don't like short stories, but I've discovered that I'll read pretty much anything by David Levithan. His writing is strong and this book of short stories was no exception. He creates worlds withing a few short pages, that take you far away from your own. The stories alone, are quite good -- ranging from happy to melancholic, but their impact comes clear when they're put together in this book. Levithan's stories are not just about love, they are about everything else as well. They are, in many ways, very real and very realistic, while at the same time, drawing us in with the ideal that is found in so many novels. What results is a very wonderful journey through 'how they met' where 'they' is everyone.

This collection was beautiful and touching. I'm very finicky when it comes to love stories and so I was a little wary coming into this collection. Fortunately, Levithan provided a perfect combination of idealism and authenticity that satisfied both my inner realist and my inner hopeless romantic.

A collection of adorable romance stories, most but not all of them starring teenagers. There are gay characters and straight characters (no bi characters, sadly), relationships that last and relationships that end, relationships that are just beginning and relationships that never actually begin at all. Overall, this is delightful fluff.