The Inside Story: Jennifer Crusie and the Architecture of Love

Abstract

Critics of popular romance fiction have long underestimated the importance of the domestic interior as one of the principal settings of the genre. This chapter examines the architecture of love in three novels by best-selling contemporary author Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me (2004), Faking It (2002), and Crazy for You (1999), arguing that Crusie’s fictions demonstrate a deep interest in the ways that interior spaces of romance shape, and are in turn shaped by, the space of the self. Drawing on the work of Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, the chapter further shows how Crusie’s work speaks back to traditional architectural theories that see the purpose of the domestic interior as controlling, not enabling, women’s intimacy and sexuality.