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keeperofthetrees 's review for:

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
5.0
dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

achingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.
i have no other words and i don't think words can explain well how i felt reading this bbook.
some of the best writing I've read in my life. made me unbelievably angry reading it too for the same reason.
_________ 
"Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."