January, apart from being a very long month, also brought a good amount of reading material with itself. When I have a shitload of work to get done and sit infront of the computer pretty much ten to twelve hours a day, the only thing that keeps me sane is investing my free time in stories about lives very much different from my own.
Trust me, the amount of books that I read this month (given that one of them was a 950 pages long opus) is quite much even for me, though there’s no denying it, I’ve always read a lot. I stumbled upon two young adult novels (one being the follow up of the first one) David Levithan’s Every day and Another day, an old friend, the second book of the Harry Potter series, this time the one illustrated by the amazing Jim Kay, a book that has been sitting on my shelf for over two years, The secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and a book that I’ve been meaning to read since I finished last autumn another book by the author: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
The one thing that links them all is that - strangely enough - they are all very good novels. Each in a different way tells an engaging story and are a piece of literature that is worth reading. Most of the time only every second or even every third book I read is one that I would recommend to someone else and I’m not actually sure that I am recommending these now only because I read them at the right time (but if that’s the case, isn’t that the sole purpose of storytellying, to tell the right story to the right person at the exact moment they need to hear it? It’s likely that there will be some of you reading this who needs to find one of these novels at this very moment too.)
On to the subject in order of reading:
Harry Potter is a story I - like many others - revisited countless times. I got the second part of the illustrated series as a Christmas present from my mother but didn’t get around to read it until this year, and gosh, if this book is not an unbearable visual joy for you to read than there is officially something wrong with you. Even if you don’t like the Harry Potter books, for whatever reason, please go, pick up a copy of this book next time you are at a bookshop. and just sneak a peek inside. This art should be framed and put out in a gallery for everyone to see (I so hope that there will be once a travelling exhibition of the originals). The illustrations are playful, detailed and did an amazing job at reimaging this world worshipped by so many of us. Jim Kay captured each character of the story with such excelency that I am dumbfounded by the work he’s done. The techniqes he uses are diverse and selected perfectly for each picture, and though in the first book at some points the logic of where the images are placed in the text is questionable, they figured it all out for the second one. My personal favourite is the reverse painting technique he uses when paiting ghosts or other semitransparent objects (and as it is hard to pick just one, the minuscule presentation of the Diagon Alley is just hands down insane.) I honestly can’t and won’t say a single bad thing about these illustrations, I simpy feel grateful that this book exists and I envy Jim Kay’s paiting abilities to death.
On to the next one, The Secret Life of Bees was a book I borrowed from a friend years back and kept putting it off to give it back because I really wanted to read it, I just didn’t feel like it was the right time. Now that I did, I’m glad that I’ve trusted my insticts, this to be read at a time when I was still just sorting out in myself a lot of the issues that this book revolves around, would have been a possible disaster. Now it rather feels like reassurence in something I didn’t even know I needed to be reassured in. These issues being: in the center of the novel there is a father-daughter relationship which’s dynamics are complicated and ultimately damaged by tragedy, loss and end in a long and fearful journey to find a possibility of happiness. Coming of age, womenhood, 1960′s in South Carolina are just the top of the iceberg here, it brings you deep in to the life of women at a time and place when being female and the color of your skin still put a mark on you in society. Here’s the thing: I consider myself a feminist but never did a single thing to make a change. I just accepted that luckily I live in a modern capital and surrounded by a higher part of society where 99% of the time nobody would ever make me feel less of a person because I am a woman. In fact, I am so equal, that the only time I think about my womenhood is when I’m menstruating.
Sue Monk Kidd tells a story in which women of all shapes and sizes, colors and ages come together and form a family not defined by blood but by the single feeling that I feel like we, the lucky girls of the modern ages tend to forget about: that man might be stronger than us in there physical form, but we, woman, with centuries of emotional abuse coded in our DNA have a legacy of being mentally stronger than any men can ever be. And this legacy is passed down, generation to generation by woman themselves. And I, still the lucky child of the modern ages, consider it narcicistic to be proud of something like this. But in fact, this book made me feel so damn proud. (And also made me think a lot about my mother and my grandmother and the fact that even with all their flaws, all the things worth knowing in life I’ve learned from them.) I realized: I am already making a change simply by being proud to be a woman.
The next book I read was David Levithan’s Every day. Previously I have read a story by him in the Christmas collection of short stories, My true love gave to me and his take on the story in Let it snow (co-written by Maureen Johnson and John Green, about whom I think I fangirled enough already). Those of you who know me also know that even though I should have grown out of them a while back I never stopped reading young adult fiction. When in doubt, I read YA. Many of my go to authors are those who write about teenagers. If I would ever write a book it would be about teenagers. Please keep it in mind that everything I tell about this book is within the bounderies of its own genre, which I love, and if you don’t, that’s okay, just skip to the next paragraph because probably there is nothing in here for you. This is a tale of a young soul who does not have a body. But he posses one, so to say, every day. Each new day A wakes up in the body of somebody else, he is aware of the body’s life, as a background story in his head, but he takes full control of that life for one single day. This could be good material for an award winning piece of fiction in many other genres, but of course, this is just a love story. And a very good one. I love teenage love stories because I found that it’s harder not to write an actually true and kind story when the people involved are still basicly children, having kids as protagonists saves you from becoming one in the crowd of Norah Roberts. It’s narrated in its entirity from A, the protagonists perspective, each day a new chapter. It is written in an easy to read yet not simplified style, the story evolves based on great plot devices, it never gets boring to read. Although it is, in fact, a very straight line from beginning to end, as it happens in YA world most of the time. It’s enjoyable, intriguing, makes you think outside of a box and leaves you with a perfect finishing touch. The next novel, is kind of like a sequel to the story, it is the very same narrative, but told from the perspective of the girl, Rhiannon. Though it’s telling the same story, even though I read it two days after finishing the first one, I never felt not invested enough to continue, instead I was glad I was able to step back to a world I grow to love. Don’t get mistaken, these are not light reading material. They drive you through a world in which the rules of a normal existence are questioned and at some point even put out of sight, which makes you think about more than you would expect from it at the beginning.
Then for the last one remains the best one: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Tartt had me at her first novel, The secret history and I did not let her go ever since. The only, very down to earth reason for which I did not read The Goldfinch before was because being a 950 page masterpiece, this book is not cheap. In fact, if you want to read the original, it’s freaking expensive, and I don’t like to read books of this length on a kindle. But eventually I gave up and after reading about 30% of the ebook in one sitting (mind you, that’s about four hours worth of reading) I sat down and made an order of a copy online, though I finished the ebook before it could have arrived, plus, bookdepository canceled my order claiming the book being out of stock. Nevermind. I am going to buy one, and read it again then possibly lend it to every single person I consider a friend in my life.
This story had a magnetic pull on me, I couldn’t escape it, I’m under the impression that I never will; that this is going to be a centerpiece on my literary adventure, Theo will be right by the side of Franny, Zooey, Camille, Vianne (just to mention the greatest of the already quite illustrious lot).
It is the story of a boy, Theo Decker, narrated by himself, from childhood to adulthood. A coming of age story of sorts, but as if written by Bret Easton Ellis and tamed by someone with a remaining sense of reality. (Fun fact: this is not even a far fetch, they went to school together and are friends ever since, but I did not know this at the time I read the book.) Without giving away too much, the narrative’s main device is the painting from the title, The Goldfinch, a 17th century masterpiece. The story goes round and comes back every now and then (in a way you would never expect it) to this very piece of art and it’s acting as a the tool that showcases the possibility of immortality.
I’m going to borrow a line that I read online in a review: this story covers a lot of ground, and does it with no shortcuts. Everything has a such strikingly real dimension that at times you feel like you are in a matrix, you left your reality for the real reality. Art, beauty, immortality, strangness, drugs, Dostoyevsky, Las Vegas, New York, Amsterdam, the way people are connected in ways you never imagine possible, yet so believable, memory, possibillity, yes, all the clichés you can imagine rolled in to one, put under a new, mesmerizing light, coming from a new, forever rising sun. The descriptions, the style of writing (a wonder!), the pacing, how every single element comes and goes and at the end finds its well designed place.
Precisely the lack of shortcuts is the thing that will probably keep some of you away from this book. But trust me on this: this story has its reason to be so long; every element, every single epigraph at the beginning of a chapter builds up to an end that is so thought through, so well written that honestly, it will blow your mind away with its beauty. I do think that the last chapter of this novel is the most beautiffuly written thing I have ever read, and I don’t say something like this carelessly. It’s not what happens. It’s the how. It’s the how it is told.
I know that this was a really long post and I realized by now that I probably should have cut this up, and post shorter texts about each book, but as this was written as a single thought process, long as it is, it’s going to stay like this. Chances are I lost some of you on the road, but those of you who remained until the end, thank you for staying.
And now, let’s go read some more!
