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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Maybe another 3.5 for me. This is a pretty slow story, probably better for people who like character driven stories rather than plot. It’s about a maybe 30 something, Owen Callahan working as a Groundskeeper of a college, so that he can take a writing class there. He meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence at the school, who has published books and is 26. He is instantly infatuated with her. Her family is from Bosnia and they are Islamic, while his family is conservative Christian from Kentucky (which is almost a character of the first part of the book). All of this takes place during the 2016 election.
Thanks to Libro.fm for providing audiobooks to educators and for this copy.
“…literature is not escaping life but a seeing it clearly… Good literature is supposed to give us a shock of recognition. We read a passage and we think - I felt that. It reconnects us to the world and other people and the felt presence of immediate experience.“ Chapter 3
“If you just let people talk and write it down faithfully, they reveal themselves without having to make a judgement.” Chapter 9
“It was and always would be.. Kentucky is my jungle.” Chapter 12
“A direct confrontation is always better. Most of our problems come up from the avoidance of discomfort…We come up with compulsions and delusions and elaborate torturous strategies all to avoid little discomforts. In a way, writing was like this. You can’t deal with life so you stand outside of it, above the fray, and you let the little marks you make on a page stand for the real thing... Compelled by the fear that you would be damaged otherwise.” Ch 12
“I can’t help what my life used to be… but you know, most ordinary people have had some kind of issue. It’s normal to have a little dirt under your fingernails.
My parents wanted me to be exceptional. I had to live up to that. Normal wasn’t in the cards.” Ch 13
“There are a lot of great novels that just meander along and plot arises because the events are framed together. Plot can just be time passing.” Ch 15
“… (her) fear was always that I decide I was too smart for her and move on…
that’s your mother’s fear too, right, that you’ll decide you’re too smart and move on.
… (she was) the living embodiment of my mother’s fear, reprinting all that was hostile to her world view.” Ch 18
“It was easy to be angry, but to hold this anger and this love at the same time in my heart…Anger alone was easy. It was cheap and lazy. Yet wasn’t this part of me valid, also… it was always like this; Always these two selves of me, these repellant points of view - who I was and who I wanted to be. The future contained in the present. Always.” Ch 19
“I’d wanted us to have a story. …but there was nothing grand about us. We were just two little people who tried to love each other in the middle of a mess. ..I marveled sometimes at how much she had changed since I met her. Or was it only the way I saw her that had changed. Surely I had changed too. I was someone other than the man she met. It was always like this, wasn’t it? No one was ever exactly who you wanted them to be. They became themselves the more time you spent with them. Which is to say, they became what you could never have predicted.” Ch 25
Thanks to Libro.fm for providing audiobooks to educators and for this copy.
“…literature is not escaping life but a seeing it clearly… Good literature is supposed to give us a shock of recognition. We read a passage and we think - I felt that. It reconnects us to the world and other people and the felt presence of immediate experience.“ Chapter 3
“If you just let people talk and write it down faithfully, they reveal themselves without having to make a judgement.” Chapter 9
“It was and always would be.. Kentucky is my jungle.” Chapter 12
“A direct confrontation is always better. Most of our problems come up from the avoidance of discomfort…We come up with compulsions and delusions and elaborate torturous strategies all to avoid little discomforts. In a way, writing was like this. You can’t deal with life so you stand outside of it, above the fray, and you let the little marks you make on a page stand for the real thing... Compelled by the fear that you would be damaged otherwise.” Ch 12
“I can’t help what my life used to be… but you know, most ordinary people have had some kind of issue. It’s normal to have a little dirt under your fingernails.
My parents wanted me to be exceptional. I had to live up to that. Normal wasn’t in the cards.” Ch 13
“There are a lot of great novels that just meander along and plot arises because the events are framed together. Plot can just be time passing.” Ch 15
“… (her) fear was always that I decide I was too smart for her and move on…
that’s your mother’s fear too, right, that you’ll decide you’re too smart and move on.
… (she was) the living embodiment of my mother’s fear, reprinting all that was hostile to her world view.” Ch 18
“It was easy to be angry, but to hold this anger and this love at the same time in my heart…Anger alone was easy. It was cheap and lazy. Yet wasn’t this part of me valid, also… it was always like this; Always these two selves of me, these repellant points of view - who I was and who I wanted to be. The future contained in the present. Always.” Ch 19
“I’d wanted us to have a story. …but there was nothing grand about us. We were just two little people who tried to love each other in the middle of a mess. ..I marveled sometimes at how much she had changed since I met her. Or was it only the way I saw her that had changed. Surely I had changed too. I was someone other than the man she met. It was always like this, wasn’t it? No one was ever exactly who you wanted them to be. They became themselves the more time you spent with them. Which is to say, they became what you could never have predicted.” Ch 25
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was an interesting read. It felt quite "Sally Rooney" to me (which, if you know me, is not a good thing". However, I liked this more than an average Rooney read. The premise was super interesting and relevant. I really felt that the world and the people in it were our world, people that exist in reality.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I paused on this book a quarter of the way through I’m not sure why but I’m really glad I picked it back up. There’s definitely an inceptionesq vibe of the book where you feel like you are reading the protagonists book that he later wrote reflecting on this time. I found Alma to be incredibly judgmental and unaccepting of Owen’s background/family which was incredibly frustrating but also made me wonder would I really be any better? Anyways, I grew attached to the writing and the sentimental feeling of the book and I really liked the language that Owen used.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Death