This Is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell

by Kevin Sampsell

Chronicling five years of a troubled romance, This Is Between Us offers an intimate view of one couple’s struggle—from the illicit beginnings of sexual obsession to the fragile architecture of a pieced-together family. Full of sweet moments, emotional time bombs, unexpected humor, and blunt sexuality, the daily life of this man and woman, both recently divorced, with children and baggage in tow, emerges in all of its complexity. In this utterly engrossing debut novel, Kevin Sampsell delivers a confessional tale of love between two resilient people who have staked their hearts on each other."This Is Between Us is an imperturbable, strange, melancholy (but never maudlin) piece of work. Kevin Sampsell straddles the line between candor and oversharing with an artful grace I found infectious."—Patrick deWitt, author of Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers"This Is Between Us is an utterly unsentimental and deeply nuanced portrait of a relationship. With great delicacy and compassion, Kevin Sampsell unflinchingly examines love from every angle-- sacred and profane, transcendent and mundane. This is Between Us asserts that messy, terrifying, imperfect love is worth it, after all. After reading it, you'll be a believer. —Jillian Lauren, author of NY Times bestselling memoir Some Girls and Pretty"Here is the quiet, funny, heartbreak truth of Real Love. Read it and weep."—Amelia Gray, author of THREATS"In This Is Between Us Kevin Sampsell writes with grace and intimacy about the toughest subject of all—love—and manages to capture a relationship in its natural wry and wistful, strange and sexy, humming with desire, quaking with vulnerability."—Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins "This Is Between Us lets the reader under the covers of what it means to be in human relationships—not the lame-o story everyone so desperately wants to smoothly fit within, but the crumpled and stained and yet still beautiful version we actually live. Kevin Sampsell has written the pieces of our glorious failures and fleeting victories with such poignancy my head and my heart are laughing, bleeding, and above all, dreaming onward. You want this book more than facebook and chocolate. I love it with my whole body."—Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Literature, Realistic Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family

Paperback

First published October 21, 2013

About the author

I am the publisher of Future Tense Books in Portland, Oregon. I work at Powell's Books and also make collage art. I have written reviews and articles for various papers and mags. I have a few books out. My memoir, A Common Pornography, was published by Harper Perennial and my novel, This Is Between Us, was published by Tin House Books. I also edited Portland Noir, a book of crime fiction published by Akashic Books. My book of collage art and poetry, I Made an Accident, came out in 2022 from Clash Books.

Here's a few links to some stuff:
My essay on the loss of a friend, the loss of a book, and depression
My Tumblr of collage!
Flash Fiction on X-R-A-Y
My essay on Prince nostalgia and going to see The Revolution
My essay about coronavirus closing down Powell's
Short story at Hobart
The sad history of my football fandom
Flash Fiction on Wigleaf
My Paper Trumpets collage column at The Rumpus
Excerpts from This Is Between Us
My Longreads essay about my mom's Alzheimer's.
My Salon essay about suicide.
Short story on Joyland
Short fiction at The Rupture
Memoir excerpt on Smith Magazine.
I Know Who You Raped Last Summer.
My essay on bookselling and winning a Patterson bonus
On my first three kisses
Poems on Ink Node
Flash memoirs at 3am Magazine
Bookslut Interview
Flash Memoir pieces on McSweeney's
Fiction piece ("Options") on Identity Theory

Interview on The Rumpus

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so happy for all the nice attention this book has been getting. It was actually really fun to write (which is not always the case). I was inspired by a lot of friends and writers while working on this. Friends: look at the thank you list on pg 237-238. Writers not mentioned on those pages who also deserve props: Leonard Michaels, Cheryl Strayed, Sharon Olds, Ben Mirov, Dan Magers, and Michael Kimball. Thanks, everyone, for your thoughtful reviews and for giving your attention and heart to this book. I'm very proud of this book.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The other night, I was in bed with the person I love and I was reading Kevin's book, which is about two people in love. I was reading this scene that included a bunch of tension between the two people in the book who are in love, and the person I love turned and moved a little, and I felt annoyed. I felt some tension between myself and the person I loved.

But it was just the book. I had sit for a moment and think about it and realize that it was just the book. It had taken over. That's how good This Is Between Us is. It made me mad at someone for no reason.

[Jason Glover · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Is Between Us is a beautiful portrayal of two people in love growing together, and apart, and together, and apart, and... it's the warm beating heart of a real relationship with all its ups and downs, difficulties and touching moments. The language pulls at your chest as you read, gradually softening your heart open. I'm always a sucker for the melancholy-tinged second person POV — with the narrator addressing their lover directly, it makes you feel like a fly on the wall, witnessing the intimacy of two strangers you'll never meet, but will feel like your close friends by the end.

I'm also a sucker for the way Sampsell has structured the book as a series of vignettes that bounce around in time. It makes it easy to pick up, read a few scenes, and put down again for later. The sparse sentence structure has a lovely pulse to it that makes for enjoyable reading from a craft perspective. Some sentences are so precious you just want to hang onto them and reread them repeatedly with delight.

I particularly enjoyed the addition of children from previous relationships to what otherwise could be a more standard story of the realities of two people falling in love. The book closely relates to the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind insofar as the sentiments it brings up around relationship, and the sort of emotional flavor, but the addition of the kids adds some rich complexity, as we can share in the struggles of the narrator in being accepted by his lover's child (as well as his struggle in continuing to stay close to his own son as he ages into those awkward aloof teenage years).

All in all, a tapestry of emotional richness and authenticity woven by a very talented writer.

[Sarah Anne Grossman · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a humbling account of a relationship and the love within it. The question that remains to me is kind of arbitrary - were they a couple that fell in and out of love multiple times? Or were they a couple that experienced the ecstacy and mundanity of a domestic partnership together. The difference may be minimal but it puts harder boundaries around Love and Being In Love. intimate, honest, unpretentious, comfortable, erotic. None of the writing was brandished or over-referenced, it read very clear and concisely, like a conversation you'd have with a close friend.

My Favorite Quote Under Year Four:
"The rain was pouring down the car windows like we were under a waterfall, and these lights reflected that water over your face like it was melting and melting and melting, but your smile got bigger, like your face was saying, I'm so glad we're trapped here! That was the moment I knew we'd probably be together forever. If we lived to be ninety and died and went to heaven or someplace like heaven, we'd meet there and fall in love all over again. We sat in that car, with the rain and passing lights and the willingness to wait forever to start moving again. Our molecules seemed to fuse together right there. Our Cells. our DNA."

[Brad Wojak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong novel, chronicling 5 years of a relationship. This book is honest and has a fantastic voice. I enjoyed it so much I went out and grabbed another book by Sampsell right away. I will follow this writer's work eagerly.

[Clay Cassells · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We're at the age when we start to forget things from our lives. You're worse than I am--you don't even remember all your boyfriend's names. That's why I want to store my things away, keep them where I can find them. The good stuff for sure. Sometimes even the broken stuff. There's a lot of that around too. I can't bring myself to throw it out. I always think to myself: I'll fix that someday." - from 'This is Between Us'.

Kevin Sampsell's 'This is Between Us' is filled with miraculous passages like the one above, keenly observed snapshots spanning five years in the arc of a relationship between a man and the woman he loves. Sampsell's decision to have his narrator address the tale to 'you'--his beloved--lends his tale the conviction of memoir and the remarkable result is a compelling and beautifully nostalgic portrait of the lives of the two main characters and their children (his son and her daughter, each from a previous marriage), all vividly drawn. Sampsell has a remarkable eye; he infuses moments of eroticism and the domestically mundane with the same observational skill. His prose is unadorned, conversational and utterly convincing.

As someone roughly the age of the narrator, I found moment after moment of this novel so identifiable and heartbreaking. I'm thankful to the author for having stored these things away--the good stuff and bad stuff alike. 'This is Between Us' is one of those novels you'll find yourself digging back into long after your first read, reliving each small miracle revealed within. I haven't read a novel this year I enjoyed more than this one.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this I couldn't help but think repeatedly, "Is this how guys think?" Because if it is, I have vastly underestimated the amount of time they are thinking about sex. And that's with studies being published telling me they think of sex every six minutes or so. This book is a tale of a five years of a couple's life. A lot of sex. A lot of thinking about sex. I found it rather hot, though weird that the guy who wrote it is the guy who introduces the authors for readings at Powell's.

[Kimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, I liked this book. It was fast-paced, quirky, realistic, and occasionally toed the line of TMI.

This novel is the story of a couple’s relationship told in little snapshots. I really liked this method of story telling because things happened so fast that you had to pay attention and you never had the opportunity to lose interest. But I was a little disappointed that some larger picture never really came into view. It was difficult to pick out the big picture plot with a bunch of little snapshots.

Usually, I prefer series to stand-alone novels because I like a longer story with more details but even though this book was only 234 pages it felt longer and had enough details for me. This was probably because of the way it was formatted. Not only with the snapshots, but it was also divided out into five chapters that covered 5 years of their relationship.

My favorite thing about this book was how real it was. It doesn’t sugarcoat relationships like a lot of novels do. It provides a realistic view of how one couple’s relationship changes over the course of 5 years. Most of the time the little stories were really cute and I was like this:



But sometimes it ventured over to the TMI space, and even though I was like this:



It sort of made me laugh because Sampsell went there. Ya know? Props.

Which reminds me, this book is so funny. It’s not, like, hysterical-laughing funny, but I was chuckling throughout this entire book. I really liked that.

The writing in this book is beautiful. Seriously. I rarely say that. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever said that about any writing. But it’s really that good. I’d tell people to read this book just for the writing. Sampsell has that way with words where he will describe something and you’ll think to yourself: Wow, I know exactly what you are talking about.

This book is more indie than usual for me, but I was glad I found it and finished it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been waiting and waiting to read this book. I heard Sampsell read at an offsite event at AWP Chicago and I swear he said it was from a book he was working on. It just struck me heavy and I had to see the whole thing. Since then, I've been watching and watching for the novel to come out. I just couldn't wait, and then it was here. I'm virtually certain this is the book that piece he read was from, though I can't say for certain or whether, if so, that piece made it in the final book. Regardless, this is exactly what I was waiting for. There is an oddness to the stream of thoughts, though still completely normal and human, that pulls me right in. Honestly, it feels like I'm intruding in a way, though I still feel welcome. It's so intimate and so sweeping: funny, embarrassing, awkward, tender, erotic, and so much else. A love story really can't be simple, clearly defined boundaries between only exact people and only one emotion at a time, and Sampsell doesn't try to force it to be so. Instead Sampsell somehow manages the full gamut, everything. Some moments are hysterical and some are beautifully heartbreaking. I'm so glad I was watching for this one. It's absolutely worth it.

[Dianah (onourpath) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sampsell's gorgeous novel is an intricate and layered account of a relationship on its trajectory of either success or failure. The tiny snippets of interaction between the nameless couple begin to pile up and form the texture of this sometimes troubled, sometimes blissful union. The use of "you" and "I" as the only identifiers connects the reader to the characters in a profound way; this relationship is mine and yours and everyones. Beautifully illustrating the slightly skewed way in which we somehow miss each other, or the glorious way in which we connect, This Is Between Us is a marvel: a two-way mirror that sees all.

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished This is Between Us and I LOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEED it. Every spare moment I had the last three days was spent utterly absorbed in it. Kevin Sampsell gifts us with vignettes so utterly relatable (even when they're not) because his characters are so unabashedly HUMAN. I completely admire his organization, flashing us to moments in the past which provide depth and relevance we didn't even know we were missing. Sometimes, the imagery was so beautiful I re-read portions over and over just to soak them up. I'm recommending this book to anyone who's ever loved anything or anyone.

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I really, really like the way it was written with the short paragraphs about different things. It really gave a broad, true picture of how relationships work with all of the dirty details. Great read.

[Lauren Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devoured this book in a night--it combines guilty, voyeuristic pleasure with great prose. You ride in the narrator's head through the beginning of a relationship, its near dissolution and ultimate tenderness. Sampsell writes so honestly it feels reckless.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do you want to listen to an uninteresting jerk prattle on about his relationship for five years? No, neither do I.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an intimate and funny novel. These are the most naked words I've read in a long time.

[Leesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give a lot of books five stars b/c I prettymuch only finish a book if it's 4 or 5 stars. Maybe a good, solid glittery 3. I love writing abt the things I love and prefer to stay quiet on the things I don't love so much. I feel like this benefits both me and other ppl. Some ppl disagree on this and that's okay too. Humans are complicated. Regardless, it is the way I choose to do things and I do what I want. That being said I LOVED THIS BOOK. It reminded me a lot of The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke, which is one of my favorite books. I also feel like this book would make a good gift. Idk why but I'd like to give ppl copies of this book. I think maybe b/c it's a novel w/o feeling like a "novel" if that makes sense. I love the sections and how I got to take a breath after the little chunks of text. Everylittlechunk gave me something to think abt and I really like reading abt relationships/breaking up/making up/marriages and the little details abt those things...the dinners and breakfasts and road trips and car rides and fights and sex and kissing and staying up all night drinking crying apologizing mistakes forgiveness hate flirting romance and all of it, all of it and in that respect, this book was a fuhreaking dream come true so thanks, Sampsell. This was an easy breezy read and I kinda wanna read it again already.

[Ezekiel Tyrus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first sampling of the author's work. I literally picked the book up at a bookstore because I liked the title and the first page got me. This is literary fiction as life. Very relatable. The characters aren't always likable but that's the point. Though I don't have any children, the books feels like the relationships I've had including a 4 year fling that just ended a few months before I picked up this novel. The tension, the humor, (in the beginning when everything they do is cute and funny,) to their sex lives and accepting your partner's baggage, learning about their first few sexual experiences in every disturbing detail. It's confessional and told through a series of vignettes instead of one chronologically plot-based novel, which is what I prefer because when you look back on any experience, from childhood to your last profound relationship, you remember it in episodes, not one great big overwhelming plot. I'm giving it a solid 5 stars because the writing and storytelling is that good. Very innovative and it felt experimental without abandoning emotion the way so many stylized novels do. What we may have here is a contemporary, hipper, more ambitious Raymond Carver.

[Jamie Iredell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've thought about what I would say about this book for about seventeen miles. Those were all miles that I jogged, and while jogging I thought about this book. Sometimes I'd be running up a hill, and I'd think about the narrator and his lover and their kids and I'd think about the fights they had, but I had to stop thinking about that because I was running up a hill and it got too hard to think about much else other than breathing, and my muscles, and how tired I was. Although when I tried real hard and thought about this book I realized that I wasn't thinking about running, and that meant that I wasn't thinking so much about how hard running is, and I was able to make it up the hills far easier than I did when I was thinking about them and not about the book and its characters. I don't know if that's what Kevin Sampsell was trying to achieve with this book--probably not--but he achieved that, and I feel better for having read it. I feel better, not only for how much easier it's made my jogging, but for how much easier it's made my own life with the woman I love, which is the metaphor I'm going for here, in case you didn't figure that out.

[Brandon Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of book we should encode into sounds and shoot out to space for the aliens to pick up and understand who we are better. If we want to be honest with the aliens.

This is the most illuminating-of-the-confusingly-normal books I've read from the flip-side of my experience as one of the many kids who grew up in divorce and re-marriage.

So real and honest and observant and human, there's no easy arcs or sentiments here, but muddled, at-times cathartic cataloguings of the first five years in the first significant relationship for a mid-to-late thirties working class man and woman since their divorces. Each have a kid around ten that they bring into the relationship, along with their confusions from the last relationship, and ongoing confusions about how to be a person.

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was like reading a private journal written by a self-absorbed guy who is fixated on sex but stops journaling before any real self-discovery or enlightenment occurs.

[Tish · Rating 4 out of 5]

So honest, beautiful, broken and redeemed. Not a field guide, but a front line emotional report on what it means to be human and to love, without a novel's usual (easier) leap into hyperbole.

[Lizzie Drexler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devoured over the course of the week before Election Day, was the perfect distraction that saved me from doom scrolling before bed. It’s seeping with a man’s perspective and the idea of saying “I like our shadows” to someone makes me cringe, but I loved the short anecdotal format and let’s be honest I’m a sucker for an impending sense of despair.

[Travis Fortney · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which you can find here :http://bit.ly/IiTkJe

--


This is Between Us is a beautiful novel that functions as something like a five-year slice-of-life, capturing the sexual and emotional ties that bind a pair of aging hipsters in Portland. Author Kevin Sampsell uses a somewhat experimental style, wherein the confessional first person narrator is writing to his beloved--hence, the two characters are referred to throughout as "you" and "I". Also, the story is told in a series of short vignettes, one or two page scenes that don't necessarily conform to a discernible plot arc. But the stylistic flourishes feel natural. The use of the second person has the effect of drawing the reader in rather than pushing us away, and the vignettes connote the randomness of memory. For me, the narrator's need to put this romance to paper added an element of urgency.

We meet You and I just as their romance is taking off in earnest. They met when they were both married to other people, and now they're both recently divorced. They have one child apiece, Vince and Maxine. In the first year of their relationship, You and I are on fire for each other, and it's not without some difficulty that they manage to merge their lives into a somewhat conventional two-parent household. In the second year, they're still learning the ins and outs of each other. By the end of the third year the fire has waned a bit, and another reassessment is required. They fight, have sex in strange places, break up, get back together, visit a couples therapist, raise their children, watch movies, read books, and never stop going to brunch. The male half of the relationship has a character tic where he cries at the drop of a hat, and it gets worse as he gets older. He also has history of bisexuality, and the biggest threat to the relationship comes in the form of "You's" seductive younger brother. The narrator's son Vince has an invisible friend that he keeps until he's a teenager. What all of this is heading toward--whether they'll make it or not--is what the novel relies on for suspense. I won't say more because I don't want to spoil it, but suffice to say the ending of the book felt spot-on to me, in the way that it provided some emotional release and deepened everything that came before it--understated, sure, but nearly perfect. It's not often that I read a book and think the author got the ending so right.

Here's the thing. Some novels manage to seep under the skin, take on their own lives inside of you, and creep back out later as a kind of memory, something that your subconscious mind is telling you that you've experienced but still have to work the kinks out of to fully understand. I'm glad I read this novel last week and waited until today to review it, because I ended up liking it quite a bit more after letting it settle for a few days. The only other novel I've read this year that's had this effect on me--and I wasn't expecting it to at the time--is James Salter's All That Is. I'm aware that the two novels seem very dissimilar, but Sampsell's prose washes over you in a way that's similar to Salter's. Sampsell's novel, like Salter's, feels unrushed. You get the sense that the narrator of both novels feels like what they have to say is worth saying the right way. Both novels are frank and honest, and both feature characters that are preoccupied, in very different ways, with understanding the ineffable--in the case of Sampsell's novel, the person the narrator shares his bed with, and in the case of Salter's the mysterious beauty in the arc of a life. The two books are also linked by the copious amounts of sex writing in each, which some readers might at times find cringe-worthy, but which I thought added to the feeling of openness.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation in This is Between Us came just after I finished reading it, when I was looking over the cover matter and saw that this is Kevin Sampsell's debut novel. It's shocking because Sampsell writes like a seasoned pro, and also because I've been aware of the author for many years now and was under the impression that he had long ago made good on his considerable potential. This is Between Us is a remarkable accomplishment, and I hope Sampsell the novelist has a whole shelf of books he's yet to write.

[Molly]

There is nothing slow about getting to know This is Between Us. One moment it is foreign, and the next you are dunked full body and naked into freezing water with the characters. The narrator is entirely frank and unmediated: sometimes I hated him and oftentimes I was just as baffled as he was by his partner and kids. Having these polarizing experiences with the narrator made me love the book even more. He doesn’t try to win you over like I sometimes feel characters are in books. But part of what makes this book so great is the episodic style. The vignettes are so easily accessible and so very personal because they are not contextualized in any greater narrative. What remains with me days after finishing the book, however, is how much this portrait of a relationship is based in the physical. Even when the couple is apart their interactions are rooted in their physical connection: touching a tree together, the feeling of the phone on his chest as her thoughts flow out of her head, riding a cow together in Sandy. The ending is just as simple and frank as the rest of the book: the narrator simply stops for a moment to breathe. There is no triumphant feeling of having witnessed something happen when you close the book. It is more simple and beautiful than that. It is the feeling that for a brief while your life overlapped with the characters’, and that’s that.

[Holly Laycock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in two days, and I'm surprised it took me that long, honestly. Kevin Sampsell's writing kept me up all night, and I eventually fell asleep with the book in my hand, not wanting to close it. Told in a series of vignettes, This is Between Us chronicles the relationship of a man and woman over five years, from their first days together to their times apart, and back again. Sampsell captures all the ins and outs of this relationship in a way that feels both uniquely special to the characters, as well as universally familiar to the reader. Reading this book was like a love affair in and of itself, but also felt like a retrospective of past relationships. Even though the characters in the book are older than myself and at different stages in life (divorced, with kids), their daily interactions are comparable to my own (23 year old college graduate). It is a book that I recommend to everyone--my girlfriends, my parents, my younger brother. Just lovely!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Sampsell's new novel is the story of a relationship, told in an up-close, intensely personal series of scenes and vignettes, organized neatly by year, but within each year, the narrator skips from moment to moment, each one as vivid as the last, cycling through doubts, joys, parenting, sex, and quiet moments--the stuff of life. The narrator, who remains nameless, addresses his girlfriend as you, opening the door to their house, their lives, their bedroom, and ushering the reader to witness a complex emotional and physical dance between two flawed characters. Kevin's fragmented approach builds on itself like a journal left out in public, each scene leaving us yearning to turn the page for another small captured moment from someone else's life. The insistent "you" shrinks the distance between reader and protagonist, and the result is intimate, honest, and beautifully realized.

[Kris V · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the structure as it is, an ongoing conversation of memories and struggles separated only by years, it's hard to know when to stop reading.
But the story is why I truly ate this book up.
So many emotions during and after having read this wonderful novel.
Feelings of envy, guilt, and even nostalgia as I looked back on my own romantic past wondering if I've ever come close to opening myself up to another person the way these two characters did.
So fully formed, and perfectly flawed - these are three dimensional people to me now.
Ones I will recall always.
I've recommended this book to men and women alike. Even though it's told from the viewpoint of one person, I believe anyone could identify with his perspective. Or if not, he gives a stark enough image of the world around him, that there's plenty to relate to either way.

Terrific.

[Sonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sat down with This Is Between Us and read straight through it. Interesting that Patrick deWitt writes one of the blurbs, because Between Us reminded me of The Sisters Brothers in some ways. Narration that's seemingly simple and then clobbers you over the head with true insights about the toughness of life. I like Sampsell's bluntness and his refusal to glamorize an emotionally complex situation. Plus the use of second person feels like a feat. I always think of Mrs. Bridge when I'm reading a novel done in vignettes, though I don't know if that comparison extends much beyond the structure. I suppose the effect is similar: these little, more or less contained moments adding up to imply a life that exceeds the bounds of the book. Which is also a feat.

[Jason Beem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really thought this was a fun, quick and unique book. It is fast paced as instead of chapters it's essentially a huge collection of memories. I think my favorite part of the book is that so much of it is the inner monologue of the male in a relationship. There were times when Sampsell's main character was thinking things that I had thought in similar situations. It was really refreshing to sometimes pull back the veil of words and get inside the mind of a person who is going through a relationship. I just found the book very refreshing, fun, sweet, sometimes sad and just a really pleasant read.

[Cindy Pineo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book hurts my heart, in a good way. "This Is Between Us" is a rare realistic account of what it's like to be in love. I can't think of another piece of writing that gets it more right. The main characters are responsible adults with jobs, kids, and exes, but their relationship is as wrenching, exhilarating, and passionate as a teenage first love. It's neither depressing nor candy coated, and it left me feeling hopeful. Plus, it's funny, beautifully written, and compulsively readable -- the book takes the form of short vignettes that have a good rhythm. I loved this just as much as I did Sampsell's memoir, "A Common Pornography."