Finalists for the 1992-1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes : FICTION

FOR LOVE by Sue Miller (HarperCollins). At one point in Miller’s intimate examination of the nature of love, protagonist Charlotte Gardner, in her 40s and on the run from her own romantic past, states that grand romances are not possible in the 20th Century because we’ve become too self-conscious, too aware of complications and absorbed in second-guessing our feelings. And yet it is just this kind of scrutiny by the author that produces this graceful disputation on the nature of love--through the introduction of credibly flawed, complexly appealing characters in the course of a Cambridge summer that brings them all home to painful truths. What we’ll do for love finally negates the notion that we can do without it, even in the Post-Freudian Age.

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists and winners are selected in each category by an independent panel of judges. Winners will be announced in the Book Review issue of October 31.