You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I give up--I can't finish this book. Initially I loved the writing but after awhile I got tired of the laborious plotting and finally I got sick of Eveline and her close-mouthed, passive way of moving through life. By the time I got to the "big reveal" about Harrison I was just annoyed. Annoyed with her reaction ("It was my fault!") and annoyed that there was still at least another 150 pages to go in this melodrama. Sorry, but I'm over it.
Memorable quotes:
pg. 232: Rourke jogged down the steps. "Let's go."
In the car, we sat, and the leather was warm. Traces of him were everywhere--the confidential fragrance that had incubated beneath the roof, the microscopic shed of skin, the fingerprints on the vinyl dash. I felt an uneasy resolution--like everything was finally right, and yet nothing was very right at all. He had his last check; I had six more weeks of school. When I considered his keys, the slick conviction of his hand as it forced them into the ignition, I felt envious of the vehicle, of its prominence in his life. I squeezed into the gap between the bucket seat and the door, and the car moved from its spot. As he swerved left from the lot onto the main driveway, the car leaned against its two right wheels, against my side, and I heard a giant swish of wind--my door, flying open.
Tentacles of air pulled at my chest, suctioning me, summoning me. I felt wind on my face, and my knees pulling right as if inside there were pieces of metal and outside there were magnets. I began to slide, and I thought, I am going to die. I am going to plunge through the air and smash down and spill out across the asphalt.
pg. 240: Alcohol crept through my veins, pooling in areas. It was hard to distinguish what I was feeling, something vague but clear, crooked but straight, like a beach blanket in the wind. I wondered why no one ever listed patience as characteristic of wild animals; I felt patient, the wild animal way.
In the medicine cabinet mirror I looked for the woman Rourke saw. If I looked with his eyes, I could see her. It was good to trust his vision since I could not trust anyone else's. He had no preconception of me, no idea at all beyond the fact that we fit. Rourke would never call me feral. I was a package in his eyes, the best and the worst I could be--a cowgirl, a jaguar, a soul to cleave.
pg. 276: "Being in love is like leaning on a broken reed. It is to be precariously balanced, to teeter between the vertical and the horizontal. It's like war: it's to demand of one's sensibilities the impossible--to expect paranoia to coexist with faith, chance with design, to enlist suspicion insensibly in certain regards and suppress it blindly in others."
pg. 310: "I was thinking that life is like being born into a prison that is you, and there comes one opportunity to escape, one second when everything coalesces into something like perfect timing, and you dash, or you don't. Maybe everyone gets a chance to run, but not everyone goes for it."
pg. 358: "Denny sets his knapsack on an adjacent chair, where his cane is hanging. An air conditioner fell out of a fifth-story window on Christopher Street awhile ago and smashed into the ground in front of him. A piece of metal flew into his leg and he had to have surgery. He ended up winning a twenty-four-thousand dollar settlement.
'If I'd be one step forward,' he'd confided with shock and horror at the time, 'it would have killed me. It just wasn't my time.'
If Denny had been killed by a falling air conditioner, everyone would have said that it was destiny. People would have to say that, just to give meaning to something seemingly meaningless. But he didn't die, and so the incident became irrelevant and remains largely undiscussed, which is regrettable, because of all the remarkable things about life, the most remarkable are the near misses."
pg. 365: "I lay back, floating, my body in free fall, and yet some determined piece of my mind keeps jerking me back. It is as if I am on the brink of discovery, but of what? My mother calls the feeling presque vu, the almost seen, a lost word or phrase that rests on the tip of the tongue, the nagging feeling that there is something you have forgotten to remember."
pg. 423: "Maybe I'm experiencing a type of dark adaptation; maybe my eyes have grown accustomed to him. Suddenly Mark is attractive to me--at least, tonight he is, as he sits there, twinkling isochronally like a movie of himself or a crystal catching light, losing it, catching it again. His delivery is artfully uninterrupted, gluey smooth as the siphon of a clam. His eyes are ringed with fatigue from achievement--they are gray like the cinders of volcanoes, like ash. There is a richness to the remains; lives have been lost to form the dust. Somehow I've never seen him so clearly--the inclemency in his features, the cohesion of his skin, like living marble, like he'll last forever, like he will prevail. He forges time to fit his will, like bending iron; timing is everything to him. This is what he knows that I need to learn. For the first time I think, I love him."
pg. 496: "I don't know whether life is pre-decided. Perhaps it can be better conceived of as a series of hallways, growing wider or growing narrower, depending upon your receptivity to chance. The trick is to stand always at the crest of fate, to become proficient at response. Never get stuck thinking small, thinking slow, thinking any one state a finality; otherwise, life turns stagnant--the hallways narrow. This is an abuse of the gift of mobility.
pg. 531: "I go farther into the grass, toward the driveway, to the train tracks. There is this sensation, long lost to me, of lightness of being, of oneness with the atmosphere, of looking into sky, this very sky, with nothing before me and nothing behind. Despite the little I knew and the little I had, I recall the feeling of inalienable possession."
pg. 232: Rourke jogged down the steps. "Let's go."
In the car, we sat, and the leather was warm. Traces of him were everywhere--the confidential fragrance that had incubated beneath the roof, the microscopic shed of skin, the fingerprints on the vinyl dash. I felt an uneasy resolution--like everything was finally right, and yet nothing was very right at all. He had his last check; I had six more weeks of school. When I considered his keys, the slick conviction of his hand as it forced them into the ignition, I felt envious of the vehicle, of its prominence in his life. I squeezed into the gap between the bucket seat and the door, and the car moved from its spot. As he swerved left from the lot onto the main driveway, the car leaned against its two right wheels, against my side, and I heard a giant swish of wind--my door, flying open.
Tentacles of air pulled at my chest, suctioning me, summoning me. I felt wind on my face, and my knees pulling right as if inside there were pieces of metal and outside there were magnets. I began to slide, and I thought, I am going to die. I am going to plunge through the air and smash down and spill out across the asphalt.
pg. 240: Alcohol crept through my veins, pooling in areas. It was hard to distinguish what I was feeling, something vague but clear, crooked but straight, like a beach blanket in the wind. I wondered why no one ever listed patience as characteristic of wild animals; I felt patient, the wild animal way.
In the medicine cabinet mirror I looked for the woman Rourke saw. If I looked with his eyes, I could see her. It was good to trust his vision since I could not trust anyone else's. He had no preconception of me, no idea at all beyond the fact that we fit. Rourke would never call me feral. I was a package in his eyes, the best and the worst I could be--a cowgirl, a jaguar, a soul to cleave.
pg. 276: "Being in love is like leaning on a broken reed. It is to be precariously balanced, to teeter between the vertical and the horizontal. It's like war: it's to demand of one's sensibilities the impossible--to expect paranoia to coexist with faith, chance with design, to enlist suspicion insensibly in certain regards and suppress it blindly in others."
pg. 310: "I was thinking that life is like being born into a prison that is you, and there comes one opportunity to escape, one second when everything coalesces into something like perfect timing, and you dash, or you don't. Maybe everyone gets a chance to run, but not everyone goes for it."
pg. 358: "Denny sets his knapsack on an adjacent chair, where his cane is hanging. An air conditioner fell out of a fifth-story window on Christopher Street awhile ago and smashed into the ground in front of him. A piece of metal flew into his leg and he had to have surgery. He ended up winning a twenty-four-thousand dollar settlement.
'If I'd be one step forward,' he'd confided with shock and horror at the time, 'it would have killed me. It just wasn't my time.'
If Denny had been killed by a falling air conditioner, everyone would have said that it was destiny. People would have to say that, just to give meaning to something seemingly meaningless. But he didn't die, and so the incident became irrelevant and remains largely undiscussed, which is regrettable, because of all the remarkable things about life, the most remarkable are the near misses."
pg. 365: "I lay back, floating, my body in free fall, and yet some determined piece of my mind keeps jerking me back. It is as if I am on the brink of discovery, but of what? My mother calls the feeling presque vu, the almost seen, a lost word or phrase that rests on the tip of the tongue, the nagging feeling that there is something you have forgotten to remember."
pg. 423: "Maybe I'm experiencing a type of dark adaptation; maybe my eyes have grown accustomed to him. Suddenly Mark is attractive to me--at least, tonight he is, as he sits there, twinkling isochronally like a movie of himself or a crystal catching light, losing it, catching it again. His delivery is artfully uninterrupted, gluey smooth as the siphon of a clam. His eyes are ringed with fatigue from achievement--they are gray like the cinders of volcanoes, like ash. There is a richness to the remains; lives have been lost to form the dust. Somehow I've never seen him so clearly--the inclemency in his features, the cohesion of his skin, like living marble, like he'll last forever, like he will prevail. He forges time to fit his will, like bending iron; timing is everything to him. This is what he knows that I need to learn. For the first time I think, I love him."
pg. 496: "I don't know whether life is pre-decided. Perhaps it can be better conceived of as a series of hallways, growing wider or growing narrower, depending upon your receptivity to chance. The trick is to stand always at the crest of fate, to become proficient at response. Never get stuck thinking small, thinking slow, thinking any one state a finality; otherwise, life turns stagnant--the hallways narrow. This is an abuse of the gift of mobility.
pg. 531: "I go farther into the grass, toward the driveway, to the train tracks. There is this sensation, long lost to me, of lightness of being, of oneness with the atmosphere, of looking into sky, this very sky, with nothing before me and nothing behind. Despite the little I knew and the little I had, I recall the feeling of inalienable possession."
So beautifully written. You definitely have to be in the right place to get through this But it definitely pulls you in in a very visceral and real way.
First read: July 2011, 5/5 stars.
April, 2016: I'm revisiting this book -- so many people either loved it or hated it. I think I read this book at a huge turning point in my life and it struck a chord. Yes, it's angsty and the main character is hard to love sometimes, but I think it captures teenage life and how messy 'coming of age' is. I didn't find the metaphors heavy-handed and I thought the pages of inward reflection were soothing (or at the very least, added to how we understand Evie as a person). I plan on re-reading (it's been 5 years and I am a much different person now) and editing my review when I'm finished.
April, 2016: I'm revisiting this book -- so many people either loved it or hated it. I think I read this book at a huge turning point in my life and it struck a chord. Yes, it's angsty and the main character is hard to love sometimes, but I think it captures teenage life and how messy 'coming of age' is. I didn't find the metaphors heavy-handed and I thought the pages of inward reflection were soothing (or at the very least, added to how we understand Evie as a person). I plan on re-reading (it's been 5 years and I am a much different person now) and editing my review when I'm finished.
Its seems nigh on impossible, but all 600 odd pages of this book are full of heartbreaking, brilliantly rendered prose. I'm often compelled to write down particularly compelling bits of language from books I read, but I was overwhelmed with trying in this book - too many skillfully crafted and deeply moving images, metaphors and thoughts.
Hamann has thoroughly captured the inner depths of a young woman who, like most of us, views herself as tragically unique in her depression and discomfort. This allows a reader to become thoroughly enmeshed in Evie's psyche.
These elements cover up the not so awesome pieces of the book - a story which is trite, even in its unique retelling and a haughty tone that reminds me of one of my least favorite authors - Jonathan Franzen, who apparently thinks his shit (and that of his characters) don't stink . . .
Maybe I'm biased, but having this privileged tone come from a woman author and female character made it feel a little less degrading.
All told, I think this was a fantastic read - I was able to really enjoy the excellent use of language, even despite the highbrow tone.
Hamann has thoroughly captured the inner depths of a young woman who, like most of us, views herself as tragically unique in her depression and discomfort. This allows a reader to become thoroughly enmeshed in Evie's psyche.
These elements cover up the not so awesome pieces of the book - a story which is trite, even in its unique retelling and a haughty tone that reminds me of one of my least favorite authors - Jonathan Franzen, who apparently thinks his shit (and that of his characters) don't stink . . .
Maybe I'm biased, but having this privileged tone come from a woman author and female character made it feel a little less degrading.
All told, I think this was a fantastic read - I was able to really enjoy the excellent use of language, even despite the highbrow tone.
I don't get all the hype over this book. It was so slow, like impossibly slow. I thought some passages were beautifully written but it just went on and on and on.
I honestly don't know why I liked this book as much as I did. It took me forever to finish not only because it was too long (it could have used some serious editing) but because I had to be in the right frame of mind to read it. The book is so full of angst and raw feelings that go along with being in your late teens and early twenties that is was hard to stomach at times. But yet, I kept coming back. I will not miss the characters but I, for a reason unbeknownst to me, will miss reading about that complicated time in one’s life when everything matters so very much.
The only thing I can think of that I hate more than this book is myself for wasting a week and a half of my life reading it. Maybe it's me - I prefer a more straightforward writing style. I just can't get into a book where there's supposedly incredible romance between two characters but you never even get to hear a single conversation they have. I just don't get it. And I don't get why every man who crosses the path of this incredibly unappealing girl falls madly in love with her. I just found it all mind-bogglingly unbelievable and tedious.