Reviews

“When they said, ‘I’m just scared that you’ll be unhappy,’ what I really felt they were saying was ‘I am scared that if you continue being yourself, we will make you unhappy.’ A sort of threat, veiled as a kindness.”

Haunting. Would be worth a reread to commit to some AP Lit analysis.

gapingvoid's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

So many aspects of the author's life resonated with me. Growing up queer in a rather rural area, trying to escape from my sexuality and all the things I felt guilty about by means of religion, the way Seán Hewitt uses words...
Except from South America I was familar with pretty much every place he described. Liverpool (the old graveyard that feels like travelling through time, enhanced by his ruminations about the life of the poet and pastor (?) Hopkins), Gothenburg (though I haven't been there, Halmstad, another Swedish town, isn't far and probably has a similar atmosphere. Imagining Elias and Seán going through a dark winter there felt desolate and so hopeless) and Lourdes (a place often visited in pilgrimages because of apparent apparitions of the Madonna - I've been to exactly the places, i.e. the bath and the spring, he described and felt pulled back in time to when I went there with my family, still completely oblivious to my own queerness, despite there being signs.. it felt like I wasn't the only one growing up extremely catholic - even though the author's upbringing was only vaguely christian - and that there are in fact others like me).
Overall, the book is rather sombre and depicts very traumatising and mesmerisingly sad topics. It felt very patchworky (which I liked), though some topics ended rather abruptly, which made me think that maybe the author himself has not yet processed or digested e.g. his relationship with Elias (they broke up and afterwards there wasn't a lot of how he felt about it except he tried to cope by hooking up with strangers). His friends also felt painfully absent. While I understand that it probably felt like he was alone during his time with Elias (which is later further explained by Elias telling him to keep his mental health a secret from his friends) they didn't play much of a role before or afterwards either.
Nevertheless, an inspiring, if rather depressing book, which made me feel seen in many ways.