In-Store: Lily Meyer: The End of Romance w/ Maris Kreizman

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/VWJSEfq0yjI
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.

A big-hearted, wise, unceasingly buoyant novel about a woman who, after escaping a bruising marriage, theorizes that happiness is possible solely with the eradication of all romance--only to find a love that could change her life forever.

Sylvie Broder was taught early to embrace joy. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors whose greatest priority was enjoying the life they'd snatched back from Hitler, Sylvie believes in the tenacious pursuit of pleasure—yet, somehow, finds herself trapped in a suffocating, emotionally abusive marriage. With enormous fortitude, Sylvie frees herself and turns to graduate school, where she develops a new philosophy: Straight women will find true liberation and happiness only once romance is eradicated.

Now, Sylvie prides herself in separating sex from tenderness—having fun with men, but never committing to one. Then she meets Robbie and Abie, and finds her philosophy sorely tested. A warm and gentle man, Robbie treats Sylvie with patience and enormous kindness, offering her comfort she hasn't had since childhood. Abie is passionate and dynamic, a man who challenges Sylvie, and with whom she finds herself constantly disarmed. With both men, she feels a deep desire that looks, worryingly, a lot like love.

Cleverly constructed, delightfully funny, and beautifully written, The End of Romance is an anti-romance romance novel that charts its fallible heroine's tumultuous journey to love and happiness with erudition and deep feeling—a story for anyone who, despite their very best efforts, has fallen in love, and wondered why.

Lily Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novel Short War. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals, and her essays and criticism appear in outlets including Bookforum, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Book Review.

Maris Kreizman is the author of I Want to Burn This Place Down. She's an essayist and columnist for Literary Hub whose work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, GQ, and The New Republic. She hosted The Maris Review, an intimate author interview podcast, from 2018 to 2023, and it now continues on as a newsletter.