Reviews

Love Ruins Everything, by Karen X. Tulchinsky

caseythecanadianlesbrarian's review against another edition

2.0

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting when I picked up Karen X. Tulchinsky’s first novel Love Ruins Everything (2000), but it certainly wasn’t what I imagined. Let’s get this straight (or should I say queer, since if this novel is one thing, it is very, very queer): Love Ruins Everything is an unabashedly cheesy novel about lesbian love and gay HIV/AIDS activism in the 9os. Although, I’m still not certain whether Tulchinsky knew it was quite so cheesy at the time that she was writing it. I’m also not certain how exactly I feel about this novel. The problem for me was that it didn’t really fit into either one of two categories: 1) a full-on guilty pleasure, trashy, melodramatic lesbian love story; 2) a serious, well-written novel about the friendships and connections between gay men and lesbians, and their joint HIV/AIDS work.

See the rest of my review at my blog: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/a-review-of-karen-x-tulchinskys-love-ruins-everything-a-failed-lesbian-camp-melodrama/

helmagnusdottir's review

5.0

Touching and kinda fun. A bit of a girl meets girl, but against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a remarriage, and family issues