The eternal stories of love

It’s Valentine’s Day. While the love birds take to crooning to each other on this special day, the time is ripe for taking a sneak peek at novels that break hearts with their profundity and sensitivity

These stories will either break your heart or overwhelm it, while transporting you to a different world. The beauty of these novels is, unlike a few lovers, they don’t desert when you need them. They sit pretty adorningly on shelf, waiting for the moment you would take them into arms and fall in love with them- Daniel Indrupati

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The story is about Anna Karenina who visits her brother Stiva in Moscow to help him restore his marriage. Although a married woman, she falls in love with Count Vronsky. Fraught between her desire for Vronsky and her loyalty to her husband, Alexei, she leaves her husband. Paradoxically, she is denied a divorce. Torn between love life and married life she leaves Vronsky in anger.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Set during the 1917 Russian Revolution, the protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, is a doctor and poet. While he is married to rich and aristocratic Tonya, as a twist of fate, falls in love with Nurse Lara. This is an interesting love triangle that is caught between love and wartimes.

Love Story by Eric Segal
A story about two schoolmates – Oliver and Jennifer, they start out skirmishing with each other and later unknowingly fall in love. Oliver, who is cut off from his inheritance by his father, for falling in love with Jennifer, is jobless and has to live on his wife’s earning. After a couple of years of struggle, he lands a plum job only to realise that Jennifer has Leukemia. The intense love between the two and hapless situation they are caught in is sure to tear the heart.

Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hester Prynne’s love for Arthur Dimmesdale is uncompromised even when she is tortured and publicly humiliated. On the other hand, Arthur Dimmesdale, who is the priest, seems to be torn between his position and his love. The confession of Arthur Dimmesdale as the father of Hester’s child, pearl, and his sudden demise shocks everyone and leaves Hestor in a complete quandary.

Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
This is one of the most celebrated works of William Shakespeare, albeit a tragic one. Romeo and Juliet, who fall in love, come from two different famed clans of literature. The family’s disproval of love eventually leads to demise of lovers.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
This perhaps is the only book where the narrator remains nameless all through. The protagonist meets Maxim de Winter and soon becomes Mrs. Winter. At every step of her journey, she finds it difficult to fill the shoes of Rebecca, Maxim’s dead wife. She is constantly harassed by Mrs. Danvers who is quick to point out that Rebecca was far better any every manner. But the genuine twist comes when she finds out Rebecca was murdered. It is an undeniable page-turner.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The plot revolves mainly around two characters Elizabeth, one of the five daughters of Mrs Bennet, and Darcy, a reasonably wealthy man. Darcy on the outward comes across as an arrogant man, but he is actually a sensitive and caring person at heart. The initial disagreements between the two slowly transcend into love. The plot thickens with a few up and downs and to everyone’s astonishment culminates in the blissful matrimony of the two.