This major study of Kierkegaard and love explores Kierkegaard's description of love's treachery, difficulty, and hope. It reads his Works of Love as a text that both deciphers and complicates the central books in his pseudonymous canon: Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Either/Or and Stages on Life's Way. Amy Laura Hall argues that a spiritual void brings each text into being, and her interpretation is as much about faith as about love. Her scholarly and lyrical style makes this study a poetic contribution to ethics and the philosophy of religion. "This is the most analytically persuasive and, at the same time, homiletically moving interpretation of Kierkegaard's corpus as a whole of which I know." George Lindbeck, Yale Divinity School "This lyrical, demanding, and doggedly honest study asks why love so often fails, not just through bad luck or tragic conflict with some other great human value, but through a 'treachery' from within. This is Kierkegaard's question across a number of his most important works, and it is the question Hall sets out to answer, taking him as her guide...Crisscrossing references are masterfully handled, throwing new light everywhere...The book is readable by lay audiences and will challenge and reward seasoned scholars. Excellent for use in graduate or advanced undergraduate classes." Religious Studies Review A major study of Kierkegaard and love exploring his description of love's treachery, difficulty, and hope. Amy Laura Hall is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at The Divinity School, Duke University, North Carolina.