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I looked away from him back to the stage, feeling a heat in my gut that I recognized as shame, but it wasn't sharp yet, it was distant or dulled, and though I knew in the next days I would be miserable with it I turned away from it now. Tomorrow you will feel it, I said to myself, feel it then, don't feel it now.

I felt myself swept by a wave of happiness, my face stretched stupidly in a grin. I must look foolish, I thought, but there was so much pleasure in being a fool, why had I spent so much of my life guarding against it?

It would leave a mark, I knew, I would have to scrub it out in the morning, but what did it matter, I thought as I closed my eyes, what does it matter, why not let it stay.

viridiantre's review

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2.0

huge disappointment, the debut was so much better i honestly don't see the point of writing this one

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. It exists somewhere between beautiful and profane, and it is so vivid in both. It is often painful to read, and I struggled to get through some of the more disturbing chapters. But it is also sometimes bewitchingly gorgeous. The writing is tactile and poetic in a way which stands out among most of what I have read recently. This also makes the hurt, the trauma, and the sadness so much worse, and not always in a good way. Like all media which dwells in the negative it can be both cathartic and distressing.