Fic­tion

Fools for Love

  • Review
By – July 7, 2025

The title sto­ry in Fools for Love, Helen Schulman’s urgent, fun­ny, and wist­ful new col­lec­tion, fea­tures a young hero­ine mar­ried to a sex­u­al­ly omniv­o­rous actor, Miguel Her­rera. In one scene, the wife, as part of the audi­ence, real­izes that the ardor she wit­ness­es on stage as he spars with his male lover and scene part­ner, Angel, is all too real. She vic­ar­i­ous­ly feels its mag­ic and she’s will­ing to cham­pi­on it, even when its heat shines on oth­ers. Schulman’s descrip­tion of the young wife’s reac­tion, look­ing back at the mag­net­ism between her soul­mate and some­one else, equal­ly in thrall, is wrenching:

… at this point in my life I don’t know if I’d wish it on any­one, but back then there was no deny­ing the jeal­ousy and exhil­a­ra­tion we in the audi­ence felt while wit­ness­ing their A‑train-com­ing-at-you brand of for­bid­den love. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that sexy, hot, rap­tur­ous action if they could have it, even momen­tar­i­ly, no mat­ter what the cost? They were so god­damned alive in each other’s arms!

The nar­ra­tor recounts this moment from the van­tage point of decades passed and the secu­ri­ty of a new­er, safer, Waspi­er and straighter part­ner. Her siz­zling Miguel has long since died of AIDS, and she is strand­ed in luke­warm mid­dle age. But her soul, expressed in this pas­sage, announces a theme for the rest of the sto­ries: Love is alive even when it is part of the van­ish­ing past, a defi­ant, inex­tin­guish­able spark among the ash-piles of con­ven­tion and compromise.

Most of the sto­ries in Schulman’s vol­ume share this thrilling, rebel­lious tone. In I Am Sev­en­ty-Five,” a woman is slow­ly invig­o­rat­ed by her late husband’s secret sex diaries. Though he seemed some­what tame, his raunchy and var­ied past comes to blaz­ing life and rous­es the wid­ow, first to revenge, and then to her own rol­lick­ing sex­u­al col­oratu­ra. It is nev­er too late, as she her­self dis­cov­ers. Soci­etal norms have no domin­ion over pri­mal desire, nor does death. In P.S.,” a trag­i­cal­ly deceased teen lover returns to life decades lat­er, embod­ied in anoth­er form, famil­iar, strange, and now par­tial to women twice his age; In a Bet­ter Place” revives the horny nature of the narrator’s own late father, posthu­mous­ly gob­bling a tow­er of treyf in Nor­mandy with a lithe African lady friend.’” Even tod­dlers, those embod­i­ments of fascis­tic, irra­tional will, refuse to be sup­pressed in the Schul­man canon: The Mem­oirs of Lucien” hilar­i­ous­ly gives life to the inner mono­logue of an id-ruled mini-tyrant. 

With both visions and revi­sions and a con­stant bat­tle between rest­less­ness and res­ig­na­tion, Helen Schulman’s new col­lec­tion makes will­ing fools for love of us all. Her wild inner heart reach­es out to our own, and as she says, who wouldn’t want a piece of that?”

Sonia Taitz is the author of six books, includ­ing the prize-win­ning Sec­ond-Gen­er­a­tion mem­oir, The Watch­mak­er’s Daugh­ter, and the nov­els In the King’s Arms and Great with Child. Praised by The New York TimesPeo­ple, The Chica­go Tri­bune, NPR, and Van­i­ty Fair, she recent­ly com­plet­ed a book called Grow­ing a Soul, depict­ing a jour­ney of spir­i­tu­al ascen­sion through the stages of one’s life.

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