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A review by zabcia
Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
4.0
89%
"I constantly need to translate the world around me to myself, and then myself back to the world again, like speaking two completely different languages simultaneously"
This book fascinated me, because I found it very difficult to read; it was too relatable, and that made me uncomfortable.
I found Cassandra to be a vaguely dislikeable character, but only because she has the same traits that I don't like in myself. I don't act on things like she does, but I recognizes the battles I fight in my own head on a daily basis the same way she describes them. I'm not autistic (I don't think), but I have read that ADHD has some characteristic similarities, and this book helped me make some connections in the memory of my past that I never understood before and was always frustrated by, so there was an element of healing toward the end for me.
My only qualm:
"Where does a story start? It's a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning - the opening of something - when what you're being offers is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that resolution isn't simply another random moment on a curated timeline."
"I'd read the entire situation wrong and gave up. Except maybe that was the start of our failure to connect: mem failing to take the initiative. Me, being too cautious, lacking spontaneity or impulisivity. Me, reading things wrong and processing the world fifty times too slow. Maybe love prefers to be eaten warm, like biscuits out of the oven."
"I always wait with my whole body. It's a three-dimensional physical experience: me, suspended in time as if hanging from space by my knicker elastic. Everything warps - gets stretched out and transparent like cling film pulled tight - until I start to feel time filling every organ."
"Everything is suddenly starting to feel saturate: pink flowers, red front door, green weeds, blue sky, I'm steeped in color like a tea bag and they run into each other and hurt my eyes and the volume turns up, sears my skin, prickles my spine"
"Kissing is so weird: we're literally testing each other out to see if there's a fit, trying on genes as if they're jeans."
"just like my other mythological namesake, it's starting to feel like every day I weave a complex tapestry, and every night - terrified of the consequences, of what will happen when I'm done - I simply unpick it again. And nothing gets made at all."
"That's the thing I've never really understood about emotions,. We're given unhelpful words for them - sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted - but they're not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? Emotions aren't binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They're layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don't arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prims, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence."
"I am mostly on my own. I am so permanently alone that I can feel it in my bones, in my eyeballs, in the roots of my hair. I can feel loneliness like a physical presence, as if someone heavy is sitting on my chest."
"I constantly need to translate the world around me to myself, and then myself back to the world again, like speaking two completely different languages simultaneously"
This book fascinated me, because I found it very difficult to read; it was too relatable, and that made me uncomfortable.
I found Cassandra to be a vaguely dislikeable character, but only because she has the same traits that I don't like in myself. I don't act on things like she does, but I recognizes the battles I fight in my own head on a daily basis the same way she describes them. I'm not autistic (I don't think), but I have read that ADHD has some characteristic similarities, and this book helped me make some connections in the memory of my past that I never understood before and was always frustrated by, so there was an element of healing toward the end for me.
My only qualm:
Spoiler
I don't think the last time jump all the way back to the beginning was really necessary."Where does a story start? It's a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning - the opening of something - when what you're being offers is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that resolution isn't simply another random moment on a curated timeline."
"I'd read the entire situation wrong and gave up. Except maybe that was the start of our failure to connect: mem failing to take the initiative. Me, being too cautious, lacking spontaneity or impulisivity. Me, reading things wrong and processing the world fifty times too slow. Maybe love prefers to be eaten warm, like biscuits out of the oven."
"I always wait with my whole body. It's a three-dimensional physical experience: me, suspended in time as if hanging from space by my knicker elastic. Everything warps - gets stretched out and transparent like cling film pulled tight - until I start to feel time filling every organ."
"Everything is suddenly starting to feel saturate: pink flowers, red front door, green weeds, blue sky, I'm steeped in color like a tea bag and they run into each other and hurt my eyes and the volume turns up, sears my skin, prickles my spine"
"Kissing is so weird: we're literally testing each other out to see if there's a fit, trying on genes as if they're jeans."
"just like my other mythological namesake, it's starting to feel like every day I weave a complex tapestry, and every night - terrified of the consequences, of what will happen when I'm done - I simply unpick it again. And nothing gets made at all."
"That's the thing I've never really understood about emotions,. We're given unhelpful words for them - sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted - but they're not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? Emotions aren't binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They're layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don't arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prims, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence."
"I am mostly on my own. I am so permanently alone that I can feel it in my bones, in my eyeballs, in the roots of my hair. I can feel loneliness like a physical presence, as if someone heavy is sitting on my chest."