Heh heh.
It’s been four months since my promise to myself about writing challenges and not one post has gone up since. Well anyway, I’ll keep the post about my intentions up as a testament to my failure (and also maybe an idea that I could actually stoke the flames of later?) I’m not giving up hope yet.
In the interest of posting something, I thought I’d write about this book that I finished today that has got me feeling things. A disclaimer before I start, though: I often suspend my own thoughts and ideas while reading so unless I’m reading with the intent of analysis, my critical thinking skills are kind of redundant. So, this is just going to be a working through of the emotions I had regarding the book. But please, do enjoy!
The book has an amazing concept. It’s about four siblings who go to a fortune teller in their neighbourhood as children to learn the date of their death, not because they want the information but out of innocent curiosity and sheer summer boredom (we’ve all been there. I’m there right now). The book then splits into four parts, each one tracing the lives of each sibling till their deaths. We get to see if the fortune-teller was right or not, and how her predictions may or may not have affected the choices the siblings make.
Reading the book made me feel incredibly morose. I am unfortunately, not a woman of many tears (I really do wish I could shed more than 30 tears at a time— all that stifled emotion is no good for you) so the emotional impact of a book often is broiling and bubbling in my chest and my mind for a while, and if it’s a book like this, I know it’s affected me when I feel that sense of unease. And I’ll tell you why.
~ cue college-admission fuelled ranting about the pointlessness of life~
I am on the cusp of adulthood, barely eighteen, and only recently have I been realising how much drudgery there is in life, the daily ploddings through routines and tasks that you should do for a better future, or a stable existence, until you realise that you’ve been spending all your life working towards this idea of a ‘better future’ without ever stopping to enjoy the present. This book was scary because it was kind of like seeing these realisations that I hoped weren’t true play out. The characters are full grown adults with understandable, complex emotions and views that led them to do whatever they did, and most often, these people weren’t very happy. The characters lived in different ways— reckless abandon, a controlled existence— and neither seemed to have been the ‘best’ way to live. It’s scary to see that, to feel like you have no control, and it’s unease for someone who’s been told that living in a particular way will ensure happiness in the future. And these promises of a golden future end up being what you always hear, until you forget that you could do anything else but continue on in that same way. What is the point?
~end rant~
I don’t think this was the message of the book, though. I think what Chloe was trying to get at is that no matter which way you live, overly cautious or revelling in excesses, there is no path that necessarily guarantees you anything. In essence, there is really no ‘way’ to live, no formula granting you an easy existence, no right or wrong. I personally think that’s a wonderful message and, at the same time, kind of scary— if what you’re looking for is that ‘way’ to live life that guarantees maximum satisfaction.
I think the reason why the book came off as so morbid (especially after the first two deaths, my god those left me feeling terrible) was because Chloe had to write around the action. She did a great job of moving through 50 years in a great way, recapping events that had happened, but most of the in-person present tense action was happening around the time of death of the character, naturally making us feel like their whole life was as depressing as the months before their deaths.
On a more personal note, as an only child who always wanted a sibling, I really enjoyed getting to be intimately connected with this family. Because it was about four siblings through time, the reader feels as though they grew up with them, and knew each of them equally, rather than how it is when reading about one character with siblings, because you see the family relationships only from one point of view. So I really liked feeling included in the sibling-bond and I could understand better the kind of relationships they had with each other.
Another personal note that made me like it was mention of AIDS. I love Queen and naturally Freddie Mercury’s death of the disease is heartbreaking to me even though it happened like a decade before I was born. Somehow, reading about the AIDS virus then made me able to understand the scale of the crisis and how devastatingly painful it was to Freddie and other sufferers at the time.
I also really liked its ending. We aren’t taken till the time of the oldest sibling’s death, like we were with all the others, and that leaves us hanging, makes us wonder whether the gypsy was a fraud or not, because we don’t know if the last prediction comes true.
I think this book is rather a heavy read because of the thoughts it gets you thinking and the emotions it makes you feel, but I would give it a solid 8 out of 10, a good read. It was very well written, well plotted out, unique concept, great characterisation and moving. Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who is mentally prepared for the heaviness of this read.
And so, post two is done!
jottings and memos 