Phoebe Connelly recalls a long-distance relationship with another bibliophile:
Books were a substitute for the sex distance made impossible. I sent him Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library and, on one visit to L.A., we snuck into the Los Angeles Athletic Club near closing and spent a blissful hour floating in the column-lined 1910s pool and exchanging chlorine-flavored kisses. There was an automatic romance to putting ourselves in the landscapes we'd shared through fiction.
The Dish 