The School of Life : Read your way out of a Valentine's crisis

As February 14th approaches, The School of Life’s bibliotherapists asked writers Matt Thorne and Toby Litt to pick their favourite books about love.

If you are in the terrifying position of being madly in love with your best friend, but too scared to confess to it, send them Joshua Spassky by Gwendoline Riley. It features a couple who are clearly made for each other, but they're both too cool and too insecure to make the first leap. Then you'll have to make the first leap. For a book to give your secret Valentine who is unaware of your all-consuming love for him or her, Matt suggests A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan, the tale of a young woman bored of her lover who begins an affair with an older man; it’s witty, amoral and French. Also Vox by Nicholson Baker, a story of telephone sex, written almost entirely in dialogue -well, it worked for Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. Matt’s all time favourite love story is that of Merteuil and Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which would be a great book to leave on your love-objects desk. Toby suggests John Donne’s poetical works or The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke for seducing your love, either as a gift, or for reading aloud by candle-light in a remote cottage on the coast; and if you want to impress your secret love, give them Ulysses by James Joyce, which Toby holds to be literature’s greatest love story.

Long-term lovers might need a reminder of the all-consuming passion of youth, and First Love by Ivan Turgenev captures that with knobs on. The young hero falls entrancingly in love with a beautiful guest who is politely uninterested in him. The truth behind her indifference sneaks up on the reader like your mum walking in on your first snog. Equally engrossing is The Go-Between by LP Hartley. Seldom has unqualified besottedness been better described; the ultimate loss of innocence is agonizing, but the atmosphere of heatwave-intensified lust and longing will take any jaded lovers back to the discovery of Love itself. For a dose of magic and fate to remind mature lovers of the role of destiny in their own narratives, Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams is one of the most enchanting tales ever to grace your bedside table. Full of lyrical descriptions of the colours of the sea, sky and rain painted by ex civil servant William, who throws his sensible job to the winds in order to capture God’s elements on canvas, this is a complex tale of converging fates that will rekindle the fires in many a long-term union.

If it is, frankly, lust rather than love, and you're a girl, send him In the Cut by Susanna Moore, in which we found one of the most erotic and charged couplings we’ve read about recently. But it has a deeply scary ending, so you'd need to communicate somehow that you're not suggesting things should end up as they do for the characters here (which is very, very badly for the heroine). Matt offers Letters of a Portuguese Nun, by Myriam Cyr (the true story of the first romantic bestseller), or Marry Me by John Updike (particularly if this an adulterous scenario).

If you are a sad or jilted Valentine, lonely and loveless on the 14th February, Toby suggests you curl up with Woody Allen’s Complete Prose to laugh your way out of lovesickness. Matt recommends Ex and the City: You’re Nobody Till Somebody Dumps You by Alexandra Heminsley,- a hilarious account of the numerous ways that Alexandra has been dumped, how she got over it, and the wisdom she can pass on to others on the rebound. He is also a fan of Gwendoline Riley, putting forward Cold Water (or indeed any novel by her) as an antidote to smug coupledom, in which slightly spiky women generally end up preferring to be alone than with men who don't live up to the dream.

Bibliotherapy consultations cost from £35. For information about giving bibliotherapy as a Valentine's gift click HERE. The Love Gift Box shown here costs £60. To view The School of Life's full range of bibliotherapy gift boxes click HERE.