#100novels

[venussaves]

What’s you're favorite book?

I have one day to find book #3 for the 100 book challenge. Help a girl out?

[venussaves]

The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper

Well I suppose there a million quotes that I could take from this book. Especially as someone who just left a kinda-sorta-relationship. However being that the book is already finished and returned to the library I guess I have no option but to relay what I know from memory.

Tropper is a great author. His words carried you gracefully from one page to the next– almost like a movie. Towards the end, it felt like that is exactly what he was going for. Strong cinematic choices that could easily leap off the page and onto a screen starring Emma Stone or Jake Gyllenhaal– if that’s what does it for you.

Personally, the one thing that really resonated with me was Joe’s seemingly unintentional message of forgiveness. The power of forgiveness. The realization that when our loved ones are living we take for granted how little we actually know about them. When Joe left his home town he was full of anger, frustration, and angst; the perfect concoction for a writer. Once out of the place that hurt him so harshly he used his talent, writing, to get intact his revenge. His best selling ‘fictional’ novel left some many mouths offaly sour. 

He had no intention of ever returning but there were things that were out of his control, as there always are, and when his father suffering a stroke he had to return. No longer could he pretend to be numb to all of the things that brought him so much strife. As he arrived back home he was punched in the face, literally, by all of the things he could no longer escape. 

No one lives happily ever after. That is the beautiful great equalizer of the universe. (Or the opinion of a slightly jaded author just recently out of a kinda-sorta-relationship. I guess you get to decide the truth on that one.) Joe’s brother did what he was supposed to do: star of the basketball team, fell in love, married the girl, had kids, took over the family business. Still however, as life goes, he found himself in a loveless marriage, with a child he could no longer connect with, and a kinda-sorta-relationship with a waitress on the side.

Joe on the other hand had money, a long string of complicated meaningless relationships, and arrived home to reconnect with his high school sweetheart. Now, the book conveniently ends right before we find out what happens to them so meh, maybe it’s true love, if I ever meet John I guess I’ll ask him.

While the book’s take on relationships left me with lots to be desired I will say this, forgiveness is a powerful tool to add to your tool belt. It is the key to the armor that we learn to guard ourselves with. It is the last step to understand empathy. Joe’s father died before he got the chance to tell him all of the things that teenage angst and poor foundations of communication hindered him from expressing. It was only after his death, as he walked the halls of his now empty childhood home, that he finally saw the evidence of this father’s love, pride, and compassion. 

Currently I can hear the voice of my high school english teacher denouncing all these statements as opinions since I have no quotes to back them up. That being said I shall end with this:

Loves leaves the door open.

7/10

[100-greatest-novels]

Spending a rainy Saturday afternoon with a cup of tea and Gulliver's Travels.