Why do words fail men when they need them most? Why is the subject of what men want emotionally, shrouded in silence? This is a book that attempts, in the style of Blake Morrison and Richard Rayner, to put men’s experience of Love into words.’A slim, elegantly written account, packed with quotations from poetry, fiction, cinema, items from newspapers, popular culture and personal anecdote, which argues that silence in the face of emotion is the predominant male response. Inarticulacy is still the norm… Rutherford doesn’t offer solutions but his assessments are both thoughtful and revealing and his anecdotes, particularly those from his own experience, pinpoint why men do what they do… As befits this huge subject, his frame of reference is wide from T.S. Eliot to Francis Fukuyama, Families Without Fathers to Men Behaving Badly. Non academic in tone, this book is very much for Rutherford’s own generation, those in their 30s and 40s who have had the post-war upbringing he explores. It will have less to say to men in their 60s and 70s, though it might help them understand their sons. And women, emotionally articulate lot that they are, will love it.’ CAROLINE GASCOIGNE, Sunday Times
