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akbarratt's review
5.0
I just finished reading a 600+ page novel about my hometown, the place I have lived for 33 years, a book that took the author 10 years to write, only the third book I have ever encountered about Orlando, and I log on to see that less than a dozen people have bothered leaving a review.
Ironically that's what the book is about... Does anyone in this city even care about it? Is it anything more than just an empty shell for transplants from across the country to project their hopes and dreams onto? A place to part and parcel and flip and exploit? Why is this city, one of the world's most popular family-friendly vacation destinations, "a 'Douchebag' and 'Stupid Bitch' nexus" all of them "pulled here like insects to a bug zapper"? What about this city inspires such vitriolic hatred that every Orlando-centric forum and chat room is filled with dozens of trolls who have briefly lived here and left but can't seem to stop talking about it?
Holic has managed to put words to feelings I've never been quite able to articulate, and there are so many, living in a place like this. The feeling of loving a city that will never love you back, is perhaps incapable of love, still an inhospitable swamp under all the pixie dust and polish. The feeling I get every single time one of my out of state friends sends me another "Florida Man" headline. The feelings that keep me awake at night wondering if a life dedicated to living in and loving this city amounts to anything at all. What it feels like to struggle every day to make the right choices and try to be a good person in a place that often seems so at odds with the very concepts of goodness and trying.
I found the setting to be strangely soothing, even while I relived all the heartbreak and emotional turmoil of the 2008-2009 Orlando Magic season. This cycle has repeated itself before, and will again. As we find ourselves and our economy on the precipice of another 2009, I'm reminded that life goes on. If you really want to understand Orlando, if you REALLY want to "get it"... This is the book to read.
Ironically that's what the book is about... Does anyone in this city even care about it? Is it anything more than just an empty shell for transplants from across the country to project their hopes and dreams onto? A place to part and parcel and flip and exploit? Why is this city, one of the world's most popular family-friendly vacation destinations, "a 'Douchebag' and 'Stupid Bitch' nexus" all of them "pulled here like insects to a bug zapper"? What about this city inspires such vitriolic hatred that every Orlando-centric forum and chat room is filled with dozens of trolls who have briefly lived here and left but can't seem to stop talking about it?
Holic has managed to put words to feelings I've never been quite able to articulate, and there are so many, living in a place like this. The feeling of loving a city that will never love you back, is perhaps incapable of love, still an inhospitable swamp under all the pixie dust and polish. The feeling I get every single time one of my out of state friends sends me another "Florida Man" headline. The feelings that keep me awake at night wondering if a life dedicated to living in and loving this city amounts to anything at all. What it feels like to struggle every day to make the right choices and try to be a good person in a place that often seems so at odds with the very concepts of goodness and trying.
I found the setting to be strangely soothing, even while I relived all the heartbreak and emotional turmoil of the 2008-2009 Orlando Magic season. This cycle has repeated itself before, and will again. As we find ourselves and our economy on the precipice of another 2009, I'm reminded that life goes on. If you really want to understand Orlando, if you REALLY want to "get it"... This is the book to read.
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