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This book is so weird. So weird that it is impossible to judge it by normal standards, which means it is perfect and gets 5 stars. It made me sad in a very amorphous way, like the sad you feel when you are growing but don't really want to.
I think, whenever I read a story in which a character experiences a loss, my first instinct is to wish for their loss to be reversed. I find myself wishing that their loved one who left would change their mind and come back, or the person who died will return to life, and relieve the protagonist of their suffering. It is normal, I think, to wish for an ultimately satisfying narrative. I wish for it in the same way that I sometimes wish my own losses would be relieved, just taken away because it hurts.
But this book taught me that even if it is harder, it is better to wish that the main character grow and heal from their grief, rather than for the narrative to "fix" it for them. The book is short, and sometimes very, very strange and tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes very on the nose. But it is all good, for some reason. This is a sweet, tragic, nourishing little story that I never even thought to want.
I think, whenever I read a story in which a character experiences a loss, my first instinct is to wish for their loss to be reversed. I find myself wishing that their loved one who left would change their mind and come back, or the person who died will return to life, and relieve the protagonist of their suffering. It is normal, I think, to wish for an ultimately satisfying narrative. I wish for it in the same way that I sometimes wish my own losses would be relieved, just taken away because it hurts.
But this book taught me that even if it is harder, it is better to wish that the main character grow and heal from their grief, rather than for the narrative to "fix" it for them. The book is short, and sometimes very, very strange and tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes very on the nose. But it is all good, for some reason. This is a sweet, tragic, nourishing little story that I never even thought to want.