Lullabies (2014) is the new collection of poems and short prose by Lang Leav, the author of the best-selling book Love & Misadventure (2013). Lullabies deals heavily with themes of love, loss, and heartbreak – it examines the fleeting nature of romantic affection and the difficulty of letting go of someone truly important to you. The simple black cover with a picture of a young girl on it describes the mood of the book perfectly: these are sad, dark stories, told from the perspective of a girl hopelessly in love.
At times, Leav manages to describe the fickleness of love in a delightfully witty and innovative – if in an exceedingly melancholic – manner. The greatest insights can mostly be found in the carefully worded, mostly rhymed poems, where Leav exhibits her talent of expressing powerful things with just a few stanzas. The messiness of break ups, the confusing ups and downs of being in love – these subjects are presented both eloquently and elegantly.
Unfortunately, most of the prose in Lullabies works the other way around – it lacks the potency of the accompanying poetry, and it says less despite utilizing more words. While the short prose pieces have their moments, they are mostly too pre-chewed and overly descriptive to leave much for the imagination of the reader. When it comes to Leav’s writing, less truly seems to be more.
Despite the varying quality of the book, I would recommend it to anyone going through a break up or other sort of heartaches. Lullabies, while not being flawless, is a great journey to the dark side of love written in an ethereally beautiful, yet easily relatable way.