Rabih and Kirsten are well-drawn, individualised characters, with distinct and separate backgrounds and personalities. But what’s interesting is De Botton’s decision to make their experience so thoroughly ordinary that their lives seem emblematic, their stories interchangeable with those of countless couples ... what propels us through the novel is not plot, but character, and De Botton’s meticulous examination of the emotions and behaviours that draw the couple together and nearly drive them apart ... Scattered throughout the narrative are italicised passages of essayistic contemplation on the nature of love, abstract reflections commenting on each new development, without mentioning the characters by name. These musings are clever, their tone a mixture of irony and sincerity. But they can border on sententiousness...If we eventually find ourselves skimming such sections, it’s less a critique of De Botton’s novel than a testament to his ability to so involve us in the fates of his endearing couple that we resent any interruptions, and hurry along to learn more about the love story that likely mirrors our own and that of so many others we know.

...love is the subject best suited to his obsessive aphorizing, and in this novel he again shows off his ability to pin our hopes, methods and insecurities to the page ... Kirsten and Rabih feel real enough, but they’re primarily inventions that allow for Mr. de Botton’s discourse on what it means to stay together over time. He pithily covers our continual need to re-establish that we’re wanted, the dangers of sharing the contents of our sexual imagination and dozens of other subcategories.

Half his lifetime and more than a dozen nonfiction titles later, this followup [to On Love about the 14-year rocky road to romantic reality of a couple living in Edinburgh reveals the constancy of de Botton's concern with the arc of relationships. But it also exposes the direction his work has taken — toward the ever more didactic. More of a case study than a novel, this is a course devised to teach readers how to navigate the pitfalls of romantic attachments ... He analyzes Rabih's feelings, especially, with the finesse of a therapist — and in fact there is more than a whiff of the couch in this exemplary tale. Breaking up his already distant third person narrative — often frustratingly — is a running, italicized commentary about love, which veers between the pointed and the pedantic ... Overall, The Course of Love lacks the playful charm and wit of On Love, but it isn't a total downer, nor as off-the-wall as de Botton's last book, Religion for Atheists. Readers looking for insights and guidance will find plenty in his espousal of attachment theory therapy.

Written in de Botton’s characteristic style — accessible and sprinkled with friendly parenthetical asides — The Course of Love picks up where On Love leaves off ... For readers who crave a conventional novel, the interruptive narration of The Course of Love will be as welcome as Clippy, the insufferable but well-intentioned paperclip character that offered to assist you in early versions of Microsoft Word ... The commentary-heavy style of the novel proves to be problematic in other ways. Gone are the warmth and immediacy of the characters in On Love, which benefited from a first-person point of view ... The Course of Love retains some of the finest hallmarks of de Botton’s style, in spite of its frequently soggy analysis about relationship dynamics. It maintains his empathetic tone, scintillating wit, and fastidiously crafted prose.

The book is a two-fer. First and foremost, The Course of Love is a novel about the course of the marriage between Rabih, a Lebanese-German architect, and his Scottish surveyor wife, Kirsten — the classic, inexorable marital progression through infatuation, disillusionment and ultimate reconciliation. Also, the book is a kind of self-help course on love, administered via a series of philosophical meditations interspersed throughout the narrative ... Two hundred pages in, de Botton's italicized reflections become a bit tiresome, and their moralistic message contrasts unpleasantly with the unconditional love that the author (and, inevitably the reader) feels for his imperfect, well-intentioned protagonists. But there's no writer alive like de Botton, and his latest ambitious undertaking is as enlightening and humanizing as his previous works.

For the first half of the story, Rabih and Kirsten tend to dwell in the realm of the general. They endure common couple conflicts. In such moments, the couple serves largely as a springboard for the ideas of the author. These bits of philosophy, especially in the beginning, are sometimes the stronger components of a given chapter ... The ideas he proposes can at times come across as obvious or shallow, but there is little surprise that out of over one hundred aphorisms, some fall short of revelation. Periodic dullness might be the price to pay in order to breathe in this dense air of ideas; to inhabit an atmosphere in which the given truth lives in proximity to the neglected one ... an ambitious book; one that resolves, if it cannot change art, to widen our expectations of what we might go to a novel for.

Instead of dissecting a romance of the short-term variety, this narrative extends over 15 years, probing the institution of marriage and its many predictable corollaries and how the love of this particular couple endures and matures over time ... Largely told in an omniscient third-person voice, the narration takes on a stereophonic quality, with both husband and wife commenting on the ever-shifting allegiances of their love, commitment and struggles. The author deftly delivers both sides of the marriage, exploring the incompatible interplay of romantic love and practical love ... At times, the philosophical overlay informs the characters and their actions, and during other moments, the italicized interjections read more like interruptions of heated scenes of conflict and ardor ... Part literary novel, part self-help handbook, The Course of Love certainly illuminates the subtle and not-so-subtle fissures of one modern marriage and what it takes for two people to stay together through the years. Despite some of the narrative contrivances, this nontraditional novel is generous in its spirit and message.

Instead of dissecting a romance of the short-term variety, this narrative extends over 15 years, probing the institution of marriage and its many predictable corollaries and how the love of this particular couple endures and matures over time ... Largely told in an omniscient third-person voice, the narration takes on a stereophonic quality, with both husband and wife commenting on the ever-shifting allegiances of their love, commitment and struggles. The author deftly delivers both sides of the marriage, exploring the incompatible interplay of romantic love and practical love ... At times, the philosophical overlay informs the characters and their actions, and during other moments, the italicized interjections read more like interruptions of heated scenes of conflict and ardor ... Part literary novel, part self-help handbook, The Course of Love certainly illuminates the subtle and not-so-subtle fissures of one modern marriage and what it takes for two people to stay together through the years. Despite some of the narrative contrivances, this nontraditional novel is generous in its spirit and message.