Today’s post offers a review of Bittersweet, by Lloyd R. Free. This is a novel set in the early 1960s – a time of great political and cultural upheaval. In this context, two young friends decide to leave the United States behind and move to France.
The full title of the novel is Bittersweet: A Coming of Age Historical Romance. I must say it right away, I’m really not a fan of over-explaining in fiction, and that includes book titles. This is particularly the case with (sub)titles denoting the genre of the book.
Ironically enough, the novel was described as literary fiction to me. It isn’t, and the title is the first clue – both because it describes what it really is (a coming-of-age story), and because it (over)describes. Have you ever seen a title such as Mary and John: A Literary-Fiction Story?
