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trogdor19 's review for:
Wild Awake
by Hilary T. Smith
The writing in Wild Awake was delicious, and the characters enthralling. It had a similar tone to “The Sky is Everywhere” by Jandy Nelson, but did not live up to the ambitious, perfect balance achieved by that book, though it did go much deeper into exploring mental illness.
This book, more than any other I’ve read, delved into what it would FEEL like on a day to day basis to be schizophrenic or manic. You don’t necessarily FEEL like anything is wrong- you just feel what you feel, like anyone else does. I was so frustrated with the people in Kiri’s life because they were too busy being annoyed by her behavior to give her the help she needed, but at the same time, that’s a very human and realistic reaction.
This book does an exceptional job of capturing the blissful highs and crushing lows of a creative life (both practice and performance), first love, and falling in and out of friendship. It had a poetic and gorgeous ending, but one that I found both unsatisfying and *winces guiltily* inadequate. In some cases, not telling the reader what happened to the characters can be an important artistic choice but in this case, I think not “finishing” the plot narrative robbed it of many, many messages that it could have otherwise carried. I was dragged, heart-first, into the world of these characters but they had many important choices to make and the book ended before they really made them, which in this case crippled the value of the plot. I still liked the book, and loved the characters, but felt that this story failed to live up to its full potential.
This book, more than any other I’ve read, delved into what it would FEEL like on a day to day basis to be schizophrenic or manic. You don’t necessarily FEEL like anything is wrong- you just feel what you feel, like anyone else does. I was so frustrated with the people in Kiri’s life because they were too busy being annoyed by her behavior to give her the help she needed, but at the same time, that’s a very human and realistic reaction.
This book does an exceptional job of capturing the blissful highs and crushing lows of a creative life (both practice and performance), first love, and falling in and out of friendship. It had a poetic and gorgeous ending, but one that I found both unsatisfying and *winces guiltily* inadequate. In some cases, not telling the reader what happened to the characters can be an important artistic choice but in this case, I think not “finishing” the plot narrative robbed it of many, many messages that it could have otherwise carried. I was dragged, heart-first, into the world of these characters but they had many important choices to make and the book ended before they really made them, which in this case crippled the value of the plot. I still liked the book, and loved the characters, but felt that this story failed to live up to its full potential.