The Amazing Triangle

As I started my next book this morning, Sarah Dessen's Just Listen, I was reminded of a reoccurring theme in many novels I have read. The friendship/ love triangle: When three characters are inexplicably intertwined through events, frienship, and/or love. It always gives a book a richer body, more to hold on to when your in its depths. In Just Listen, Dessen creates a friendship triangle between three juniors in high school. Although I'm only eighty pages in, I know that one friend was pushed out because of social differences, and the other two end up torn apart because of reasons unknown thus far. Clarke, the social outcast, was pushed out and inevitably emerged as the "good guy," while the others, the main character (our protagonist) and the "bad guy," emerged with social grace as the popular girls in school. As you can see, this triangle creates the drama needed to keep readers interested and the emotion required to attract us to each character.

Let's talk about the love triangle. Movies have made it famous for decades, but novels have done it for much, much longer. One of the most famous love triangles in history was with the King of England, King Henry VIII. Although the novel is claimed as fiction, Phillipa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl produced plenty of real-life events from England in the 1500's. The love triangle existed between the king and two sisters who were ladies in waiting for the queen. This triangle continues on for years in the novel and produces endlessly dramatic results.

If you are a beginner, I would really recommend Sarah Dessen's novels: easy reads and wonderfully complicated plots. If you would like any more recommendations on books with "the amazing triangle," comment and I would love to give you a list.