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★ ★ ★ ★ ½
Wow. This was honestly unlike anything I've ever read. At first I thought the way it was written was just going to be for a chapter or two, and if it wasn't, I remember thinking I don't know how much more I could read. I was wrong. Don't get me wrong, plenty of books have made me emotional in a variety of ways. But this one was so different. It was so real. The plot itself was life, and all the mess, sadness, joy, love, pain, despair, friendship, beauty and chaos that comes with it. It honestly made me anxious and depressed at points, and I had to take breaks or refrain from reading. I highlighted a lot of excerpts from this one, mainly from Peter's chapters, that I thought were funny or just so real. I'm obsessed with how genuine she was able to write these characters and really portray exactly how they think and feel and process and act. It wasn't just the words themselves, or a perfect selection of adjective it was the cadence. The flow, or sometimes even the lack thereof.
“In silence they lie together for a time. Sense of them both having dropped a long pretence. Wants almost to say more. Tell her everything, what happened, is still happening, the agony, hatred he wakes up with every morning, wishing he was dead, fear of losing her, both of them. I can't go through it again. I'm sorry. There's someone else. I think it would be better for everyone if I. No need however he thinks to speak.”
“What then. Whole thing getting out of hand. His life, widening black emptiness from which he could only avert his eyes.”
“Why do you have to leave. Why does everyone, why does everyone always have to leave me, why. Actually, I'm sorry, before I settle up, I'll have the same again. Vodka, yeah, thanks. Can I pay with card?”
This one. The seamless switch from spiraling, depressing, depressing, self-loathing, thoughts into an ordinary and seemingly uneventful exchange. Ordering another drink. Asking to pay with card. Meanwhile the thoughts he's having are all consuming, bringing him down and down. Trying to drink it all away, when inevitably, that won't lead to anything productive or good, yet it distracts. It takes you away from life, even for a little, but sometimes only to suck you back down into the pit you were trying to crawl out of , with a force ten times more powerful than what it took to get out.
“Well, if that's suffering, he thinks, let me suffer. Yes. To love whoever I have left. And if ever I lose someone, let me descend into a futile and prolonged rage, yes, despair, wanting to break things, furniture, appliances, wanting to get into fights, to scream, to walk in front of a bus, yes. Let me suffer, please. To love just these few people, to know myself capable of that, I would suffer every day of my life.”
How to even describe what reading that does. MY heart actually hurts for him. The life he so desperately wants to live, impossible, and out of reach. That feeling in life when you have no control of what's happening to you or around you. And all you can do is just be in a little boat alone trying to ride out the waves and not capsize. The people we love are just as much as part of us as our sense of humor, favorite color, or food. To lose two people, in very different senses of the word, yet both devastating. It's no wonder he is feeling the way he is. But also to recognize the privilege it is to have people you care so deeply about, that losing them would cause such deep despair. That is life. Part of what it means to live, as tragic and painful and awful as it is.
“Life, which is now the most painful ordeal conceivable, was happy then, the same life. A cruel kind of joke, you'll agree. Anyway, you're young, make the most of it. Enjoy every second. And on your twenty-fifth birthday, if you want my advice, jump off a fucking bridge. Thanks.”
Funny, sad, lonely. This was his rock bottom. The rejection and ensuing fight with Sylvia. Immediately buying a bottle of vodka, drinking the entire thing on a train ride to see his ex-girlfriend. Only to be met with his brother. Getting in a terrible fight with him, then drunkenly crawling to his mom's house. Only to wake up, make the journey back home, contemplating different forms of suicide. Then he opens the door and the two women that have become as essential to him as his legs, are in his living room. In denial of his feelings, or maybe just so lost and confused he barely knows his lefts from his rights at this point. Trying so hard to make sense of everything and rationalize it, yet to no avail. There is no optimal solution, Peter. That's the truth of it. You can't have it both ways. He knows this. Says this. And maybe to keep them both in his life would keep them both happy, but not him. Later, he says about Naomi: “That he has come to love her, such an absurdity: like a stage fight where it turns out the knives are real.” I loved this line. I feel like it could be applied to so many scenarios in life. You think you know exactly what to expect. Something rehearsed, or normal—mundane. Maybe a bit fun. Entertaining. But no! The knives are real. Maybe you get stabbed, or worse, you stab somebody. The fun is over. The monotony disrupted. Now you enter a new chapter of your life, one with the pain of being stabbed or being the stabber. But maybe it is not all so bad. In the end, he found a way to at least begin preparing his relationships with those he cares about. All it took was to show up, and to be honest. And honestly, I think that's all you can ask of someone.
At the core of all that is the fact that this just a slice of life that Rooney has excellently captured. Never have I read something that so accurately depicts what it's like to live. And I know that's a strange thing to praise, as at the end of the day, I am living a human life, and so is literally anyone else that reads this. I know books are sometimes used as an escape from reality, to not have to think about what it means or feels like to be human. But I think it's important to be reminded of and have to face the nuances of life. To remember that things aren't necessarily as clear as they seem. Like Ivan and Peter's relationship. Brothers, a decade apart. Perpetually at different stages in their life. Inherently very different people. Yet, at the end of it all, able to say I love you to each other, and spend a Christmas together. Despite all the anger and jealousy and resentment that lingers between them. Or Sylvia and Peter. How complex of a relationship they have, yet, it makes so much sense. I don't know, I think I just really appreciated how authentic everything in this book was. I feel like I often find myself a bit annoyed or tired with now unrealistic some other books I've read are. I think it was also a bit cathartic. Although they aren't real people, just to know that life isn't as easy as we are all trying to pretend it is. To sum it up, intense, heartbreaking, and comforting. This one has left me with a lot to think about, and, honestly, a bit of a new outlook on things.
