Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Bad Romance: When Literary Love Goes from Bad to Worse
In William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander says, "The course of true love never did run smooth." No kidding! And what about when love isn’t remotely true and it goes from bad to worse? Literature is littered with examples where bad romantic relationships go to hell in a handbasket.
For the reader, it’s strangely addictive watching two lovers fall apart – rather like seeing a car crash in slow motion. We have selected 25 notable examples of fiction featuring adultery, deceit, abuse, torture, obsession, murder, lying, cheating and a myriad of poor decisions made in the name of love. You might be less willing to go on a blind date with that pretty girl from accounts after reading a few of these books.
There’s no shortage of gripping drama in this selection as love veers into abject terror. Cupid’s aim has never been worse.
25 Novels of Bad Romance
Room at the Top
by John Braine
An RAF veteran, in the late 1940s, has his eyes on two women.
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War of the Roses
by Warren Adler
A lifetime of small mistakes and neglect explode into the nastiest of divorces.
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Third Degree
by Greg Iles
A husband finds out his wife is having an affair and then loses it.
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White Oleander
by Janet Fitch
A young girl’s mother falls for a womaniser. Everything goes badly wrong.
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The Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M Cain
A young woman is unhappily married to an older man.
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Waiting
by Ha Jin
Lin Kong is an army doctor forced to marry a woman he doesn't love.
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Little Children
by Tom Perrotta
Everyone in this neighborhood seems to be involved with the wrong person.
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Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Tommy spends years in a relationship with Ruth while secretly loving Kathy.
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The Other Boleyn Girl
by Philippa Gregory
Henry VIII is the ultimate bad husband.
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Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
A lesson in how couples fail to communicate. A very good novel indeed.
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The Collector
by John Fowles
The main character falls in love but is socially inept, so he kidnaps his love.
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The Pact
by Jodi Picoult
A painful story of a teenage couple with a suicide pact.
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The Awakening
by Kate Chopin
Edna Pontellier struggles with a passionless marriage.
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Damage
by Josephine Hart
Married man falls for his son’s fiancé and tumbles into a family-destroying affair.
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An American Tragedy
by Theodore Dreiser
A young boy falls for a rich girl while exploiting a poor girl.
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The Good Soldier
by Ford Madox Ford
The book, about dissolving relationships, begins: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard”
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Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
The classic love triangle – as usual three is a crowd in this legendary novel.
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Candy
by Kevin Brooks
A young boy falls in love with a heroin addicted teen prostitute with an angry pimp.
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A Reliable Wife
by Robert Goolrick
Set in 1907 a man places an ad for “a reliable wife” and gets more than he bargained for.
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Tipping the Velvet
by Sarah Waters
A woman is driven to madness after finding her lover, a male impersonator, in bed with a man.
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