Romance

Critic Justin Chang recommends two films, both dramatic thrillers that demonstrate the power and persistence of love. They are "Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time" and "Two Of Us."

Though he's known for making quasi-horror films, director Park Chan-wook's latest movie is a melodrama set in 1930s Korea. Critic David Edelstein says The Handmaiden is fun and full of twists.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "Bridget Jones's Diary," a novel by Helen Fielding that began as a newspaper column. It has been the best selling novel in Great Britain for six months and has just won the British Book Award of the Year.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "The End of the Novel of Love" (Beacon Press) by Vivian Gornick.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Intersection of Law and Desire, (Norton) which debuts the feminist lesbian private investigator, Micky Knight by J.M. Redmann. And a collection of lesbian pulp romances, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles (Quality Paperback Book Club) by Ann Bannon which has just been republished.

Book Critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Tree of Heaven by R.C. Binstock, about the Japanese invasion of China during the 1930s.

Commentator Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Buccaneers," (Viking) the final novel by Edith Wharton. It was published as an unfinished novel after Wharton's death in 1937. Now it's been completed -- by scholar and novelist Marion Mainwaring -- and published again.

Playwright Marsha Norman's first novel The Fortune Teller, about missing children and abortion, adopts a freewheeling, almost primitive approach to narrative. Critic John Leonard says unconventional structure works.