The thought behind homeopathic medicine, if I’m not mistaken, is to take a tiny dose of whatever poison or allergen is ailing you, in order to activate your immune system to heal/protect you against it. Perverting this idea, I sometimes deal with fears by taking a large dose of whatever is scaring me – going parasailing when I’m afraid of heights, for example. As a father of a newly-teenaged daughter, I just read The Lovely Bones. Have you read it? What did you think of it?
I read some good reviews of it in the papers; the reviews on amazon.com are less positive. But I bought it less for the reviews than simply, like most books I buy, it sent out “buy-me-you-won’t-regret-it” rays at the bookstore. And I didn’t regret buying it.
I have, actually, been disappointed by most fiction I’ve read in the last 20 years, and had pretty much stopped reading novels. When I was in college, I read fiction like I thought it would contain life-changing secrets. Even the most mundane books sometimes felt as if they did, too. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, is the first book I’ve read in 15 or 20 years that’s felt that way. It is the first book, ever, that’s had me weeping like that, although it also made me laugh. It was, for me, one of those books you don’t want to put down and can’t wait to pick back up, and I finally just stayed up all night to finish it.
The book’s premise is grim, at least to me – the narrator is a 14 year old dead girl, telling her story from heaven – of her rape and murder, and of how losing her affected the rest of her family. It was hard to read, but I felt annealed afterwards. The life-changing mystery here, I guess, came less from the magical, miraculous elements – ghosts and heaven and souls, than from the realistic effects of grief and love and time and forgiveness on the characters.
After I read Fight Club I thought I had a grasp on a bigger idea of how things should be, how we should value what is really important in life rather than the materialistic… and eh, I lost it. Too much bare-knuckle fighting in dingy bar basements.
i haven’t heard of it, but now i want to read it. i am in that stage where most works of fiction contain a life-changing message. but i had to stop reading so much fiction because too much life-changing wears one out after awhile. now i stick to scientific works more or less. and little house on the prairie.
When I clicked on that amazon link and read the first sentence of the description, my reaction was “no way.” I have the same reaction to that as I do to horror movies in general — I just don’t want to know.
Which is pretty weak, I suppose. But lately all I can handle is science fiction, which is actually quite bizarre for me, considering that until the last few months I’ve never really read fiction at all.
I too, however, am susceptible to the every-book-is-life-changing thing — “No, seriously, I’m not kidding, this book about genetically altered butterflies in Indonesia — it will change your understanding of what it means to be human! I swear!”
Then later I feel sort of dumb. Cuz like, good book and all, but sheesh.
It is somewhat odd that this comment is longer than any of my posts in the last three months.
(sorry, heh)