I'm have a fountain, no a mountain, no a Herculean amount of passion pouring out of every pore and opening of my body for what I am about to write. The last time I felt this way about a book was when I was an angry 13 year old and one glorious day discovered “God are you there? It's me Margaret” by Judy Blume... Things clicked into place, keys fit locks and I felt like I wasn't alone in my adolescent hell.
Well my friends, I can announce another such book has come my way. A book that seems to speak to the very heart of my inner dialogue. The dialogue that sometimes encourages me to buy an entire chocolate cake just so I can violently shove my hand in the middle and obliterate it's perfection..(just me?)
Lets lay all the crap down. We all live for human connection, to find like minded people who get us. When you're weird like me that can be a very rare occurrence. I'm the girl who eats in the shower, loves musicals, men with moustaches, have an irrational hatred of Jennifer Anniston, collect porcelain owls and wooden horses, wears sequins and pearls before noon and believes there is no excuse for flat shoes after six. My parental role model is Homer Simpson and I love watching vintage soapies, hours and hours of vintage soapies. As I said - connection for me is rare. I feel like this book gets me... (YES I realise how disturbing that last sentence is)
It's had a lot of hype. This presented a huge problem for me. Embarrassingly enough; I have made a sport of avoiding movies and books that have big hype surrounding them.
“I'll show you massive movie conglomerate, you won't get MY $14.50 bitches”
"No! I'm not going to read a book just because it's number one on the New York times best seller list"
I relented ONCE this year and for the record- FUCKING HATED "Girl with the dragon tattoo".
I know it's a pathetic protest and I probably miss out on some quality content but I just cannot let it go.
The book I'm speaking of was given a reprieve form my petty protest as it received a review that intrigued me. The reviewer said something along the lines of: “This is a novel of such quality that I envy anyone who gets to sit down and read it for the first time” For some reason those words really struck a chord with me, what a beautiful sentiment. I purchased a copy of the book that day.
I'm not going to regale you with lines form the book nor am I even going to tell you what it's about only that it's real. Proper, legit REAL. If I was being a wanker I'd say it's extremely poignant in many passages.
It touches on the subtle nuances of day to day life with such force that you feel like you've been punched with a velvet glove. You're left wandering why you found these brilliant yet obvious revelations so hard to articulate in the first place. It took my breathe away on several occasions, I also found it immensely confronting. It hit very close to home. I saw aspects I don't like about myself in most of the characters – male and female. To see some of my most dark and inner thoughts on the page of a widely available book was both horrifying and a relief.
Literally thousands of reviews have been written about this book, it even made Oprah's book club list for shit's sake. There is nothing I can say that hasn't already been said – in a far more articulate and sensible way than I could ever manage. All I'll say is that I connected with this book, it has changed me.
It's called Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.
Buy it yesterday.
Have a thought provoking week.
E. x
No comments:
Post a Comment