The best American novel about love that I have ever read is, by far and without the slightest doubt, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Baldwin was a genius, and pretty much everything he wrote was impressive, but I strongly believe that this novel is his absolute masterpiece.
Giovanni’s Room is not long. Every word in it is so necessary that the novel lands like a punch. It’s concentrated, it’s inevitable, it’s intense. This novel is love itself.
I remember reading it for the first time sometime in the early 2000s and finding myself unable to believe that the novel had first been published in 1956. Great literature is great because it doesn’t need to speak about you in order to speak to you. I’ve never lived in Paris. I obviously wasn’t around in the 1950s. I’m not gay, and I’m not a man. But this novel was more than a book. For me, it was an experience. For years I have joked that I feel like I’ve never really left Giovanni’s room. Once you feel it, you feel it.
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