Have you just closed the last page of Wuthering Heights and been left bereft? Whether you’re experiencing it for the first time or diving back in ahead of the film’s release this week (Friday 13 February), we’re all in the same heart-wrenching boat. The swooning, the passion! I’m counting down the days until we get to see Cathy and Heathcliff on the big screen, because this epic love story for the ages is one to leave you wanting more. Yearning for more, some may say.
And nobody yearns quite like these lovers. Cathy says it best: “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” We’ve all been there, babe. Completely overwhelmed by passion and maddened by someone’s presence – or absence. The slightest look, an accidental hand-brush; it’s enough to dine out on for weeks. Whether you’re wanting someone, wanting to be them, or just wanting to be wanted, yearning is the kind of madness that just feels so damn good.
Looking to fill that void? (Or, let’s be honest – we’re all yearners here – fuel that longing fire.) I’ve got the read for you. Whether you’re pining for the love of your life, down bad for an unrequited love, missing someone far away, or craving a feverish crush, there’s a literary prescription to soothe your gentle heart. Here is a list of books hand-picked to channel the fire of Heathcliff and Cathy after they’ve torn your heart out at your local cinema. Don’t say I didn’t warn you...
Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux
Loved Simple Passion? Sad it was only 60 pages long? Well, buckle up, because Annie Ernaux’s unfiltered diary of her 18-month-long affair with a younger, married Russian diplomat is the long read your heart craves. Every moment of Getting Lost is stretched and stalled as Ernaux malaises in her apartment consumed by lust, waiting for the phone to ring, or stealing glances with her lover across a room. She writes as a woman subject to the throes of bodily desire, recording her encounters with her lover with the kind of brutal frankness only a diary entry allows. Relentless in its sheer levels of yearning, this is a love affair captured through a raw, voyeuristic lens. I loved every second.
Sri-Lankan born Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient is a lyrical and tragic novel, with a love story at its centre. In an abandoned Tuscan villa at the end of World War II, four lives intertwine. A nameless, severely burnt man is the titular English patient (so-called from his accent, but his origins are mysterious), cared for by Hana, a young Canadian nurse, alongside Caravaggio, a thief, and Kip, a bomb-disposal expert. As memories rise to the surface, the patient reveals himself as the Hungarian explorer Almásy, who met his tragic fate through a doomed love affair with Katherine, a married woman he once loved in the Egyptian desert. This is a Booker Prize-winning novel that aches with desire and loss, and it’s guaranteed to provide a heavy dose of yearning-induced devastation (the cathartic kind).
“Sometimes, I stalk my ex-husband.” The first line of Lidija Hilje’s debut novel cuts deep, and perfectly captures the desperate, prostrating ache of unrequited yearning. A decade previously, we see Ivona and Vlaho meet as students in sunny Croatia, intoxicated by first love. Ten years later, they are divorced, while Ivona closely and painfully observes Vlaho’s life with her former friend, whom Ivona introduced him to. When Ivona finally meets someone new, the two couples are drawn into a strange, high-stakes dynamic. It’s the ultimate tale of two people who belong together but are wrenched apart by forces out of their control; I started crying about halfway through and never truly stopped. Alexa, play The One That Got Away...
This list would be incomplete without the undisputed queen of yearning, Sally Rooney, and Intermezzo delivers everything she does best. Set in the months after their father’s death, the novel follows brothers Peter and Ivan as grief scrambles their lives. Peter is navigating two separate relationships with both his younger girlfriend Naomi, and his unattainable university sweetheart Sylvia, who suffers from chronic pain. Meanwhile Ivan, prodigal chess player and self-proclaimed awkward introvert, meets a woman nearly 15 years his senior. Rooney captures yearning in its multiple forms: new desire, taboo age gaps, lingering first love, fractured brotherhood, an absent father. Grief and love are played off against each other in this messy chessboard of relationships and fraught family. Trust me, it’s worth sticking with the dense prose for the full emotional reward.
On a day like any other in a toy department in Manhattan in the 1950s, Therese meets Carol, a glamorous, enigmatic woman. Drawn together, the two women find respite from the suffocating expectations of their relationships with men: Therese from a future with Richard, a man she doesn’t love; Carol, from her collapsing marriage with Harge. At first, Therese isn’t sure whether she wants Carol, or wants to be her. But this is no ‘schoolgirl crush’, as Richard calls it: Therese eventually knows she is pursuing Carol out of deep, genuine love. On a road trip across the United States, in stolen moments in motel rooms and wind-open landscapes, the women explore their forbidden feelings. But how long can they outrun discovery? Carol is an intense story of obsession and sapphic longing that should be on every yearner’s list.
9 More Books On Yearning For When You’re Quite Literally Yearning For More
Wooed by a one-liner? If you’re up for a little speed-dating, I’ve picked a few more of my favourites to keep you sated...
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – A young American man falls for Italian barman Giovanni and is consumed by their three-month long affair in Paris.
Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez – Florentino waits a lifetime for Fermina, the woman he has never stopped loving.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman – Desire burns between Elio and Oliver during a sultry Italian summer. A love song to brief, youthful, passionate affairs.
Madonna In A Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali – A tale of obsession and love lost between a young Turkish man and the woman who captivates him in Berlin. You think you know yearning, then you read this.
One Day by David Nicholls – Another classic case of two people who should be together but proceed in alternately yearning for one another over the next 20 years. A modern classic.
Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth – A story of first love between two young women in rural Ireland, where religion and expectation loom, dark and threatening.
A Room With A View by E.M Forster – Lucy must choose between convention and love after a passionate awakening in Italy.
The Song Of Achilles by Madeleine Miller – Centres on desire that can never be fully satisfied and the ache of loving someone you can’t keep. A Greek tragedy that will stick with you.
Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray – Nell is in love with brash, bold Eve at school; both queer, both in denial. Later, they decide to form an unconventional family. Years of unrequited love? Perfect.
