Friendship | Book Chatter

Days of Awe
By Lauren Fox
Knopf Publishing Group, Hardcover, 9780307268129, August 2015, 272pp.

The Short of It:

Life goes on even when you feel like it shouldn’t.

The Rest of It:

I read this one far too long ago to remember all of the wonderful details but I STILL remember how I felt while reading it and I remember having all kinds of love for it.

The story is simple but the characters and the way they are woven into each other’s lives, are not. The story opens with the funeral of Isabel Moore’s best friend, Josie. Isabel and Josie, both middle school teachers and as close as friends can be, have done everything together so when Josie is killed in a car accident, Isabel’s world is turned upside down.

Isabel’s grief is all-consuming and yet, on the outside it’s not terribly apparent just how bad off she is. Her husband can’t deal with her anymore and can’t understand why she is unable to move on from this. But inside, she’s quietly falling apart. Especially when she learns that Josie’s life was not picture perfect either.

I really enjoyed this novel. I enjoyed it because it perfectly captured that moment of grief where you can’t figure out how to live. The presence of Josie is everywhere for Isabel and she’s stuck between mourning her and not liking her for the things she did prior to her death. The events leading up to her death force Isabel to question if she really knew her friend at all. How does one move on from this?

There is a slight meandering quality to the story but it felt right to me. When you lose a loved one, you find yourself floating through life and the narration has that same feel. Isabel is just floating along, trying to make sense of her loss and I must say, her pain is quite evident and raw and just so tangible. The author did a really good job of capturing all that angst. I highly recommend it.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

A Little Life
By Hanya Yanagihara
(Doubleday Books, Hardcover, 9780385539258, March 2015, 736pp.)

The Short of It:

This story will shatter you into a million little pieces but you need to read it anyway.

The Rest of It:

*No spoilers*

This isn’t the type of book where there is a huge plot reveal but not knowing its true subject does lend a rather precarious nature to the reading experience. Because of that, I won’t go into what the book is really about.

What I will say, is that it’s a book about friendships and relationships and the pain that comes with knowing that it’s impossible to really know everything about a person, no matter how close you are to them.

The book spans three decades and follows the lives of four men, all friends from college. We see them at their best, and their worst. There’s Malcolm, an architect of sorts, Willem, an up and coming actor, JB, a self-absorbed but extremely talented artist and Jude, a brilliant attorney who happens to be the center of the story.

Jude is damaged by the events of the past, but he’s struggling to realize his self-worth and it’s a brutal struggle to witness. There’s pain, lots of it, heart wrenching events that will twist your stomach into knots, but the writing! It’s so damn beautiful. I read it on my Kindle and every other paragraph is highlighted because I just couldn’t stand to leave the page without marking its passage in some way.

I loved every minute I spent with this book. It’s over 700 pages long and usually, I set my reading at a good pace to finish in a reasonable amount of time, but not with this one. This one I lingered on for a long, long time.

It’s by far, the best book I’ve read this year and as soon as I turned that last page, I wanted to run out and buy a physical copy just to admire it on the shelf. THAT COVER though. Don’t click on that link unless you want a hint at what some of it’s about. It’s an image that can mean many things and let me tell you, it does.

Have I completely scared you now? I hope not because it’s really such a wonderful book and I will continue to sing its praises until someone tells me to stop.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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