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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
the last half of the book honestly felt impossible to get through but there were some really good quotes.
Some fantastic writing, took some time to get into but I inhaled the second half.
————— favorite quotes:
It was fun. Sort of. The reason it was only sort of fun was that my life had collapsed. Unlike the people at the party, with their homes full of spouses and children, I was as alone and unmoored as I’d been twenty years ago, in these same suburbs, hanging out with the same boys. In the intervening decades, I’d thought I was going somewhere. But I had just been driving around.
++
When I was young. When I had no idea that all over the city, all over the world, there were people walking around sealed in their own universes of loss, independent solar systems of suffering closed off from the regular world, where things make sense and language is all you need to tell the truth.
++
GRIEF IS A WORLD you walk through skinned, unshelled. A person would speak to me unkindly—or even ungently—on the street or in an elevator, and I would feel myself ripping apart, the membrane of normalcy I’d pulled on to leave the house coming undone.
++
The idea that in life, unlike in writing, the drive to analyze and influence might be something worth relinquishing was to me a revelation.
++
I asked if she’d ever wanted children. She told me, “Everybody doesn’t get everything.” It sounded depressing to me at the time, a statement of defeat. Now admitting it seems like the obvious and essential work of growing up. Everybody doesn’t get everything: as natural and unavoidable as mortality.
————— favorite quotes:
It was fun. Sort of. The reason it was only sort of fun was that my life had collapsed. Unlike the people at the party, with their homes full of spouses and children, I was as alone and unmoored as I’d been twenty years ago, in these same suburbs, hanging out with the same boys. In the intervening decades, I’d thought I was going somewhere. But I had just been driving around.
++
When I was young. When I had no idea that all over the city, all over the world, there were people walking around sealed in their own universes of loss, independent solar systems of suffering closed off from the regular world, where things make sense and language is all you need to tell the truth.
++
GRIEF IS A WORLD you walk through skinned, unshelled. A person would speak to me unkindly—or even ungently—on the street or in an elevator, and I would feel myself ripping apart, the membrane of normalcy I’d pulled on to leave the house coming undone.
++
The idea that in life, unlike in writing, the drive to analyze and influence might be something worth relinquishing was to me a revelation.
++
I asked if she’d ever wanted children. She told me, “Everybody doesn’t get everything.” It sounded depressing to me at the time, a statement of defeat. Now admitting it seems like the obvious and essential work of growing up. Everybody doesn’t get everything: as natural and unavoidable as mortality.
I was drawn to this memoir about a traveling, exploratory, and open-minded writer-- the kind of life that I always dreamed of. An exploration of my alter ego.
I read this book in one day because I couldn't pull myself away as the story moved through the years, just as I cannot pull myself away from my own life. Once I made it through the first few sections, bored by tales of a privileged childhood, I was hooked. Images of a house on Shelter Island* and running around the coast of California made my heart thump with longing for such life. The pain that Levy experienced stabbed me in the gut.
Some of my favorite moments:
"She loved everything about [Shelter Island]: the town dump, where you had to go because there was no garbage pickup; the post office, where you got your mail because there was no delivery service. Tasks that were obsolete in the city brought you together with your neighbors on the island in a kind of benign intimacy that reminded Lucy of her childhood, and me of a book I loved about an extended family of bears living harmoniously in treehouses in the forest. People didn't lock their doors. A placard on the wall behind some bar at the Chequit Inn read 'Somehow, this strong small island will survive.'"
"I wanted what she had wanted, what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all."
"The idea that in life, unlike in writing, the drive to analyze and influence might be something worth relinquishing was to me a revelation."
I read this book in one day because I couldn't pull myself away as the story moved through the years, just as I cannot pull myself away from my own life. Once I made it through the first few sections, bored by tales of a privileged childhood, I was hooked. Images of a house on Shelter Island* and running around the coast of California made my heart thump with longing for such life. The pain that Levy experienced stabbed me in the gut.
Some of my favorite moments:
"She loved everything about [Shelter Island]: the town dump, where you had to go because there was no garbage pickup; the post office, where you got your mail because there was no delivery service. Tasks that were obsolete in the city brought you together with your neighbors on the island in a kind of benign intimacy that reminded Lucy of her childhood, and me of a book I loved about an extended family of bears living harmoniously in treehouses in the forest. People didn't lock their doors. A placard on the wall behind some bar at the Chequit Inn read 'Somehow, this strong small island will survive.'"
"I wanted what she had wanted, what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all."
"The idea that in life, unlike in writing, the drive to analyze and influence might be something worth relinquishing was to me a revelation."
The transitions felt a bit jagged, but in hindsight that gives a depth to the grief and unmoored feelings of the author. I found this book when I was googling recommended reading for people suffering through miscarriages (for a friend) and was both horrified and intrigued by the summary. It read like fiction to me- the loss of her baby a truly terrible event- but also some of the general behaviors of the adults: infidelity, drunken suicide threats, being happy to have a sugar-daddy baby daddy. I'm sure it's more a testament to my rigid opinions, but I just had a hard time connecting (and didn't cry once).
I felt like I should have liked this book more. It was interesting enough and reading it didn’t feel forced. It did at times though feel just like the diary of someone going through a really hard time. Which is okay. I was touched by the story but not moved enough to really feel the need to recommend.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Ariel Levy has a way with words. This book was achingly beautiful.
Listened to author narrate this memoir of some heartbreaking trials she endured. I think what I like the most about her writing is the righteous rage and anger that shines through so articulately and precisely.