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A review by lilcurious
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
emotional
sad
5.0
In true Mr. Knightley's quote "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more" fashion, I have a lot of trouble speaking about this book.
My first time (out of 4) reading this book I was 16 yo, severely depressed and in an abusive relationship. More than that, I was melancholic to the bone and searching for any comfort I could in art and, more specifically, books. There's no better reader for this book than me at 16, no one has ever connected that hard with or been as touched by this book as I was. I actually wrote a beautiful review about it that I lost!
The following reads were less successful, I kept trying to relive that first experience, but of course nothing worked. This time I decided to face the book as a new book, try to read it with new eyes, and I am back to loving it immensely. Not as much as I did at 16, but then again, maybe I don't want to be in the place needed for this book to hit me like it did.
I don't know if anything I say about it will be tremendously helpful as a reviewer, because everything feels so personal, but I'll point out some things I enjoy.
My first time (out of 4) reading this book I was 16 yo, severely depressed and in an abusive relationship. More than that, I was melancholic to the bone and searching for any comfort I could in art and, more specifically, books. There's no better reader for this book than me at 16, no one has ever connected that hard with or been as touched by this book as I was. I actually wrote a beautiful review about it that I lost!
The following reads were less successful, I kept trying to relive that first experience, but of course nothing worked. This time I decided to face the book as a new book, try to read it with new eyes, and I am back to loving it immensely. Not as much as I did at 16, but then again, maybe I don't want to be in the place needed for this book to hit me like it did.
I don't know if anything I say about it will be tremendously helpful as a reviewer, because everything feels so personal, but I'll point out some things I enjoy.
- The best first line ever! The first one from a non-classic book that I memorized, the first one in my personal canon of first lines.
- I realized I love when the narrator is talking to me about something, but it takes a while for them to reveal what it really is about.
- The book in general is full of artifices, full of half truths and metaphors, of distractions and segways. But somehow it makes it feel more truthful, like the deviations of a real person's speech, like the narrator was hurting too much to talk about it directly, but that at the same time she went with full force and maybe a bit overboard when she did talk about it.
- The writing in general is marvelous, so many lines occupy my mind and mean so much to me.
This is the most I can say for now though. Maybe when I reread it again I will have more to say, but of one thing I am pretty confident: I will keep rereading this book for ever.