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SAYING SORRY

THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life. MY TEENAGE years, the Seventies, were a time of common culture. We didn’t have much choice, so we all did the same thing: wore huge bellbottoms, laughed at Les Dawson. And we all — every girl in my year — read Love Story and bawled our heads off. Oh yes — we knew how to have fun. And because we all read Love Story, we grew up believing Erich Segal’s most famous words as if they were gospel: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’

But I look at them now and think: really? And then I wonder how much damage they might have done.

Segal certainly makes his case in this slim, little classic about Oliver and Jenny and their deep, doomed passion. What he is saying is, if you are properly loved, you will always be forgiven. Well, of course. And if you’re that confident, then, please, go around offending without apology.

But the word ‘sorry’ — ditto ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ — is important in love’s vocabulary. It might make no difference in the long run, but it will certainly ease the day-to-day.

The act of forgiveness also has its rewards, as Plantagenet Palliser can tell you. Trollope’s Can He Forgive Her? is the first in his wonderful series, in which naughty Cora, forced by her aunts to marry into the stuffy Palliser family, plans to bolt with a playboy.

Planty — it’s worth reading for the names alone — makes huge sacrifices to keep her, and they are blessed with a long, rich, triumphant marriage.

Young Briony Tallis, in Atonement, is a capricious child whose flights of fancy cause no end of trouble. In the summer of 1935, she witnesses a sex act, falsely accuses her sister’s lover, condemns him to prison and never admits her mistake.

It is a tragic, twisting story of crossed love and guilt against the backdrop of war. And the upshot is, it would have been much easier for everyone — Briony included — if she’d just had the guts to say sorry.