The Behavior of Love, Virginia Reeves
The Behavior of Love, Virginia Reeves
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

The Behavior of Love

Author: Virginia Reeves

Narrator: Sarah Ginsberg, Jacques Roy

Unabridged: 8 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/14/2019


Synopsis

A riveting, “psychologically acute” (Esquire) portrait of a marriage, from the Man Booker Prize­–longlisted author of Work Like Any Other—“a deep saturation and beauty of experience” (The New Yorker).

Doctor Ed Malinowski believes he has realized most of his dreams. A passionate, ambitious behavioral psychiatrist, he is now the superintendent of a mental institution and finally turning the previously crumbling hospital around. He also has a home he can be proud of and a fiercely independent, artistic wife Laura, whom he hopes will soon be pregnant.

But into this perfect vision of his life comes Penelope, a beautiful, young epileptic who should never have been placed in his institution and whose only chance at getting out is Ed. She is intelligent, charming, and slowly falling in love with her charismatic, compassionate doctor. As their relationship grows more complicated, and Laura defiantly starts working at his hospital, Ed must weigh his professional responsibilities against his personal ones, and find a way to save both his job and his family.

“Reeves alternates between Ed and Laura’s perspectives in cunning ways, creating the rippling effect of a rushing river, as love flows and ebbs over a decade” (Entertainment Weekly). A love triangle set in one of the most chaotic settings imaginable, The Behavior of Love is “a sensitive examination of love, responsibility, and compassion” (Kirkus Reviews).

About Virginia Reeves

Virginia Reeves is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Her debut novel, Work Like Any Other, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and Booklist named it to their Top 10 First Novels of 2016. Virginia lives with her husband and daughters in Helena, Montana, where she teaches writing and speech at Helena College. The Behavior of Love is her second novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on May 20, 2019

Marriages, as many of us know, are complicated relationships and this novel is a clear reflection of that. Ed and Laura’s marriage seems in trouble from the beginning. It seems as if they loved each at one time and maybe they still do, but so many things are just not working. In the alternating narr......more

Goodreads review by Marjorie on April 22, 2019

Dr. Edward Molinowski has become a workaholic. He’s the superintendent of a mental institution that needs every second he can give it. His patients and his work take almost all of his time, leaving little for his artist wife, Laura. Laura feels that Ed just doesn’t see her anymore. Plus, he talks fa......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on April 25, 2019

This is another beautiful and poignant novel from Virginia Reeves, this time about a damaged man and the two women he loves. Dr. Ed Malinowski is a brilliant behaviorist running a mental institution in the 1970s. He’s a charming philanderer, much to the chagrin of his wife, Laura, who is drawn to him......more

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau on April 15, 2019

via my blog: [URL not allowed] 'What are you doing, Edmund? Trying to wake her up. She is not yours to wake.' Penelope is Doctor Ed Malinowski’s favorite patient, “one of the few bright spots” in the metal hospital he is the superintendent of. From the beginning of the novel, Edmu......more

Goodreads review by Giada on May 03, 2023

Cosa succede quando tutto va a rotoli? Quando i piani di una vita si sgretolano inesorabilmente? È quello che succede a Fred Malinovsky, psichiatra comportamentale, che, agli inizi degli anni Settanta, arriva, con la moglie Laura, in un piccolo paese del Montana per dirigere l'ospedale psichiatrico.......more