"I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when t"I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."
What do we talk about when we talk about love? This book is, contrary to its title, not very forthcoming on the subject. I’d say this is rather a collection of all the things we don’t talk about when we talk about love. You know, the loneliness, the miscommunication, the hurt, the regret. All the terrible things that lie in wait in the shadows, while we focus on the light.
There’s something almost grotesquely normal about Carver’s stories, something oddly realistic, as if you’re looking at a something you can’t believe you actually believe.
For instance; someone puts up all their furniture for sale in the yard – but not by just throwing it out there, no by carefully arranging everything so it looks the way it did inside, even connecting the lights and all. Who the hell would do that, I mean, who in real life would do such a thing? Possibly no one and quite possibly all of us, given the right (or rather wrong) circumstances.
This is a collection of stories about everyday people, who’ve reached the end of their rope one way or another. It’s middle-class people looking back at middle-class lives, through a lens of alcohol, cigarettes and regret. It’s obsession with the present to avoid looking at a bleak, disappointing past and possible future.
Carver is precise and yes, razor-sharp in his language and his observations. He cuts to the core of human relationships – especially the failed kind. He pours out dish after dish of disenchanted characters, story after story of middle-age regret and failure. Yet it remains vivid and fresh, there isn’t a dull story in there. There’s an air of unpredictability, like you can never trust a story to go where you expect it to; sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but you’re never certain of anything. It’s an atmosphere of unease, something is constantly just about to snap, could be your neck, could be a twig, you don’t know.
What puzzles me the most is that it didn’t make me sad. Perhaps it’s that I can’t really identify with anyone in it, it’s all very recognizable, but like something I’ve seen in a movie or in other people, never myself. I’m still young, I’ve got years ahead of me to make mistakes that I can look back on with bitter regret and longing, but for now I’m still hopeful.
Carver presents something that is at once familiar and strange. There’s something terrifyingly normal in all of it that makes you go “could this be me?” and yet at the same time you know it isn’t you. That it’s too staged to be real – which makes you believe in it even more.
It’s honestly about all the things we do when we’ve given up and that are somewhat abnormal, but don’t seem that way. They’re just what we need to do, regardless of how odd it looks to anyone outside the experience. Carver makes unreasonable human behavior seem reasonable, the insensible sensible. I don’t know how, it just happens.
Here’s a comparison that some might find unsavory, but it’s a bit like if Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski had a lovechild while piss drunk. A very eloquent, but ultimately hopeless lovechild.
I don’t know. I’m not good with short story collections. But I liked this one, I liked it a hell of a lot.
"There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had." ...more
Okay, listen, this book is fantastic. I agreed to read it because I’ve heard people say really good things about it and the idea held a lot of promiseOkay, listen, this book is fantastic. I agreed to read it because I’ve heard people say really good things about it and the idea held a lot of promise.
It’s the story of Lara Jean who’s written every boy she’s ever been in love with a letter. It’s not a lot of boys, I think there are 5, but each one she’s written an honest, heartfelt letter about her feelings. She writes it all down, seals the envelope and hides it in a box in her room. The point of writing letters is that she’ll be rid of the feelings, it’s her way of getting it out of her system and moving on. It’s a pretty neat idea. I think we should all write more love letters, regardless of whether we’ll send them or not.
Of course one day she discovers all the letters have been sent.
I thought it was gonna be a story of Lara Jean learning to move on from it, of her having to face her feelings instead of hiding them, and to admit them out loud instead of writing them down – and to learn there’s nothing shameful in loving someone, even if they don’t love you back. I thought the letters being sent would send her on a journey of self-discovery. Which it does, partly, but it involves a lot more romance than I thought it would.
I don’t know why the romance surprised me, I really should have figured it out, but I honestly didn’t expect this to be a legitimate love story. It is though and fortunately it’s a really, really good one.
It’s a very classic pretend-to-be-in-a-relationship-to-save-face deal, where Lara Jean, in an effort to avoid any awkward moments with her friend (and letter recipient) Josh, teams up with another former crush and letter recipient, Peter, to pretend to be dating. It’s a perfectly dumb and hilarious plan, that pans out with enough humor, wit and delight to keep you entertained throughout.
The fake-relationship trope is popular and well-loved, probably because it works so well. It’s rare for it to happen in a YA novel, though. Or I feel it’s rare? I’ve only ever seen the high school version in fanfiction. It was absolutely wonderful, however. I loved that it took that turn. And contrary to many other romances I wasn’t always sure how exactly this one would pan out, or who’d end up with who. The character and relationship growth felt very organic and natural, there was no falling swooning into each other’s arms, it was a slow, gradual happening.
However, it’s just as much the story of a family. Lara Jean has two sisters, Margot and Kitty, and the relationship between those three and their father was a huge part of what made the book so lovely to me. I love sibling relationships, especially when they get to really influence the story. The most important thing to Lara Jean is not, after all, the letters or Peter or Josh, it’s her sisters and her family.
I get that some might find Lara Jean childish and annoying, and I’ll grant that, but jesus, I was the same when I was 16, especially before I had any experience with love. I think the Lara Jean that emerges at the end feels mature and confident and so much more grown than the one we meet to begin with. I appreciate that.
THE ENDING THOUGH. I was so mad, that isn’t a fucking ending at all! Why, Jenny Han! Then I realized there’s a sequel, so you know, it makes sense.
In any case, I enjoyed every second of reading this. I wish I could read it again for the first time. ...more
I read Khanani's book Thorn and loved it, which is frankly the reason we're here today. I don't mean here in the world, I mean here reading and writinI read Khanani's book Thorn and loved it, which is frankly the reason we're here today. I don't mean here in the world, I mean here reading and writing this review, respectively.
At first this story felt incredibly familiar. I was happy with the diverse cast, but the story itself was not very original. Our young girl, Hitomi, wants to prove herself, wants to fight against the tyrannical leaders of the city, has hidden magical powers, attempts to prove her worth to her rebel-leader, but it goes wrong and she's captured. It was a slight variation of a tale we've probably all read before... but then it changed.
After her capture everything goes wrong, of course, and Hitomi finds herself thousands of miles from her city, alone, frightened and in a real freaking mess; trapped in a tower with a very hungry something. From there on out it wasn't at all what I expected, and despite its brief length (only 140 pages), Khanani manages to create a complex world and a compelling story. She keeps it simple, but forceful, and very realistic despite the fantasy setting. This was something that impressed me with Thorn as well. Despite having a protagonist who's clearly got immense powers and is Very Important, it never feels over the top. Hitomi is sympathetic, resourceful, and clever, but she makes mistakes, and she's allowed to make them, to ponder them and learn from them - something not nearly enough fantasy protagonists do. Taking her from the very familiar city-setting Khanani keeps the story from stalling and becoming cliché.
The friendship that grows between Hitomi and another character is one of my favorite things, and a huge part of what made it a memorable reading experience. It was less a story of epic battles (difficult to fit into 140 pages in any case) and more about Hitomi growing as a person, no doubt we'll see her perform daring heroics in the next book, but this was a nice, unassuming start to the series.
Abandoning its familiar premise it turned into something unexpected, but delightful. It was fun, surprising and well-written, and as with Thorn I couldn't put it down. Khanani starts fast and doesn't waste time. Definitely one of the better takes on YA fantasy, and I can't wait for the next book to come out. ...more
”Sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.”
M”Sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.”
Mike is not The Chosen One, nor are any of his friends or his sisters. In fact they’re all pretty ordinary people with ordinary, trivial lives. They just so happen to live in a town that sometimes has some supernatural trouble, you know, ghouls, vampires and this time Immortals. Fortunately the real chosen ones, they call them the indie kids, take care of all that. Mike just lives here.
This sort of book was bound to pop up sooner or later. As amazing as it is to read all that YA dystopia, fantasy, sci-fi etc., we’ve probably also all realized by now that we’re not the chosen ones either, and we’ll (probably) never be called upon to fight hordes of the undead or sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. And this is of course the question, because what happens to those people when shit goes down? Where are their books?
Well, this is one such book. Patrick Ness tries his very best to answer the question of what happens with the ordinary people standing in the shadow of those more extraordinary than themselves, and his answer is a really, really good one.
Every chapter starts with a few lines outlining what the indie kids are up to, what threat is looming, how they’re trying to cope with it, all as a delightful, hilarious parody of a narrative we know very well, before the real chapter starts and we are told the story of Mike and his friends, Jared, Mel, Henna and Nathan. Compared to a story of kids battling Immortals and trying to save the world this other story ought to be boring or trivial, and the beauty of it is that it isn’t at all.
“I reckon there are a lot more people like me than there are indie kids with unusual names and capital-D Destinies”
In fact, Ness weaves a tale that had me crying through most of it. It’s not that it’s particularly sad, it’s just that it hits so right and is immensely relatable. I know I’ve a great desire to feel special, and not just feel special, but to be special, to possess something unique that sets me apart from everyone else, that makes me one of a kind. I also happen to know that this is not the case, that few, if any, humans possess something like that, and yet the mistake is to assume that because of this we aren’t special or important. We are. I am. I’m important to the people closest to me, perhaps even to people very far from me. My life is extraordinarily ordinary, but I find great joy in it. I will never save the world, very few people will, but I’ll still see friends, go to university, hang out with my family, volunteer, read, and laugh a lot. It’s meaningful to me, even if it looks very tedious written down. It’s not a lot but it’s something.
This is, I think, what Ness wants to show with this book. It’s funny, lovely, sad, and real. There may be indie kids running around battling Immortals, but the struggles of Mike, Jared, Henna and Mel are common, we can relate to them. And we realize that doesn’t diminish their importance, on the contrary.
I’d also like to thank Ness for giving us a rather diverse cast, especially in terms of mental illness, which – as far as I know – he portrays rather accurately. They’re not perfect, any of them, they’re each of them broken in different ways, but they love each other and they make the best of what they’ve got. It’s a wonderful book, not just because it’s well-written and engaging, or because it tackles issues others might have ignored, but because it reminded me of some of my deepest insecurities and made me feel a whole lot better about them. That’s not easy, and I’m grateful. Oh, and for the beautiful portrayal of sibling relationships, that reminded me so much of my own brother and me and why he’s still one of my favorite people on the planet.
“Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense, but trying to find a way to be happy anyway.”...more