Beautiful Boy by David Sheff / Vulnerability Hangover

“I am always missing someone.”

The vulnerability shared within the pages of Beautiful Boy cannot be overstated. I return to this book time and time again, ever since my first read, because David Sheff doesn’t write around the issue, he puts it under a microscope for us all to observe its sharp dissection. I’ve always found it easier to appreciate the specific, instead of the general.

Beautiful Boy, and other books I’ve read since that chronicle a similar pain (The Dutch House, Everything I Never Told You, A Room of His Own, A Spool of Blue Thread), taught me to see the beauty in being vulnerable in front of others. It’s rare to find people nowadays who are still willing to reveal their hearts. I appreciate others who do it, and I want to learn to appreciate myself when I do it, too.

I cherished David Sheff’s view of his son, Nic, because it voices the sad reality of being left in the dust by the people you love. It’s Nic’s refusal to come back home and see the ruin that made my pain feel seen.

My story is about my older brother who I adored as a kid. He’s seven years older, but to me, he was a giant who knew everything. His opinion meant more than my own. How he saw me is how I saw myself. I wrote essays at school about my personal hero being my brother. In Beautiful Boy, I related to Jasper’s utter adoration of his older brother.

When I was little, my brother’s room used to be right across from mine. So when I had trouble falling asleep, I used to open my door, and seeing the light under his door calmed me a lot. If he’s awake, I’m safe.

When our parents divorced in 2011, that’s when I noticed the first cracks in the foundations. I feel like with every year since things have slowly grown significantly worse with my brother. When we moved from Belgium to Israel in 2011, he decided to stay behind to complete his university studies. I regret his decision to stay to this day. It ruined our closeness. It’s nearly impossible to transfer our relationship, which was very physical, to simply talking on the phone. We talked in real life by commenting on what was happening at the moment, and it wasn’t the same on the phone where you have to recap what you did that day. What can an eleven-year-old go share on the phone that would be interesting to her eighteen-year-old brother?

There’s a perfect example in the show ‘Hamefakedet’ (Kan 11), where someone is moving away, and she reassures her friend with a “we can still talk on the phone,” and her friend replied: “”And what exactly are we going to talk about?”
Some relationships are difficult to transfer to the phone.
It’s like my brother went off to university with a whole family, and refused to come back to see all that was “broken.” I have a difficult time understanding his decisions. But reading books with similar characters helps me feel understood.

In the first couple of years after our move abroad, my brother would still visit us when he could (once-twice a year, mostly on birthdays), and for that moment of his visit, things would feel like old times: normal. I would have the idea that his real life was with us in Israel, and he had been abroad simply on a trip. Facing him, I would feel intense emotions of the love for him, and I would miss him even while he was right in front of me. And then he would have to fly back. And I hated it because it meant mostly radio silence, as our phone calls were never the same as meeting in person.
That constant back and forth of love and pain was very hard to bear – I’m sure on his side too.

At fifteen-sixteen, things came to a clash when he told us he met someone and was taking things seriously. We could see right away that this person wasn’t The One. In the past, he used to share his excitement about any new girlfriends right away. The fact that he kept it hidden for so long meant he knew something wasn’t right.
And we were right to be suspicious. This person would constantly make him choose between his family and herself. She would make him miss birthdays and force him to limit his contact. I started to hear her through his words. He was changing before my eyes, for the worse.
I tried explaining to him what I felt, but when he didn’t get my point of view time after time, I grew tired of trying and trying. So I chose to shut him out. Give him the silent treatment. That was my way of coping. Because why put myself through the misery of trying time after time if he doesn’t get it? I rebelled by shutting him out. I thought that maybe that way he would see that this was serious for me. That she’s hurting us by making him choose. I felt that by shutting him out that he would wake up from this spell she put on him. I thought he would choose me like I would choose him. I remember as a kid when asked who I’d prefer my mother or father, I’d always reply: “My brother.”

Here’s my brother, this person I love, and he’s changing into someone unrecognizable. I don’t know how to stop it. Flight, Fight, or Freeze? I chose Freeze. If I didn’t make a move maybe then nothing would change.

I regret my way of communicating to this day because of the outcome. But I was so young and I didn’t have the tools to fight for myself. And never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the situation would ever reach the state it’s at today. I didn’t know I had to fight for something I took for granted. I had never known a world without my brother. He was always at the center with me circling in his orbit.

Instead of learning to talk it out together, to face the problem. Shutting him out just taught him to do the same. We were two hurt beings who didn’t grow up with the tools to fix these kinds of breaks.

I used to shut myself off so completely that now I can barely face anything conflicting. It’s like I’m allergic to situations that can cause hurt. Because I never let myself deal with the fear they caused in me, I just ran away. (I can hear an echo of this, “But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!”)

It took me years to realize that in an attempt to deny that the bad really happened or was happening, I would go inside my head where supposedly the ‘real me’ was, to whom these unpleasant events didn’t happen. In my head, it was safer. I would avoid deep connections because the voice in my head could sometimes convince me that people were waiting to hurt me if I’d show them the real me. So I’d create this shell of what I presented to the outside so that people couldn’t really hurt the real me through it.

I never thought my brother would choose a stranger over his family. He was loyal to us from day one. But I guess all the added-up frustration over the years made him choose a stranger over the familiar. I never thought he’d shut us out completely. I never even knew such a reality could exist. And now, I’m faced with the deep need to repair a connection that was once unimaginable to be torn apart.
I just remember thinking one thought over and over: Why would my brother act the same as our father? How could he cause the same hurt, after we experienced together the ugly and painful parts of the divorce? Did he forget who the real enemy is – like Katniss reminds the districts in The Hunger Games trilogy. Our father would be happy to know there’s someone continuing his wreckage. If our past selves got a glimpse of us now, what would they make of us? If I had to guess I would assume some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are present that are controlling his actions.

Maybe that’s why I still hold on to small things from the past that remind me of my brother when he was still with us, like the smell of the deodorant he used in his adolescence (Mennen Marine) or the soap that stood in the bathtub when we all lived together. Little things that make me feel for a moment that he is with me like he used to be. Visiting old places where we grew up also helps to visualize. Slowly being exposed to stimuli from the past that I never thought I would see again, helps me to see the evidence that the past existed and I didn’t imagine it. Returning to our childhood town helped me on the journey to return to the real me and slowly shed the hard shell I’d carried with me ever since.

If there’s anything I would tell 17-year-old me, it’s to learn to open up, instead of swallowing everything inside. And opening up is a skill you have to acquire; it won’t come naturally.
Because if you avoid the conflict to keep the peace, you start a war inside yourself. All that you want to say to them doesn’t go away with the years. It only grows into resentment, despite trying to appear that everything is okay. And usually, you’re just left with all you want to say with no one interested to hear it anymore (learned that one the hard way).

In my case, I had countries separating us and time wasn’t in my favor. I didn’t have enough time to rebuild that trust when he did visit. But I still have hope. I remember that when I treated my brother like it was old times, I saw his old self shine through. Those moments made me remember why I kept loyal to his old self.

It reminded me of all the times I used to wait for my big brother to come back to visit. And I still feel like I’m waiting at an airport, like here he’s coming next, no here after this man he’s come next, no if I count slowly to 100 he’ll arrive…

It took me years and years to understand that my older brother hasn’t actually lived with us since our move to Israel. To understand that when he came to visit, it was only to visit us, and he didn’t really live with us. My thinking that his real life is with us, his base, and everything that happens abroad is unreal was actually wrong. I think it took me until last year to understand this when someone wrote to me “When we stopped living with them when we were little” about his older sister. I had a peculiar feeling reading that sentence because I suddenly realized that I was still living in the past where I was just waiting for my brother to come back like I used to wait. Like people waiting at an airport. And I think it took me so long to understand the reality because it goes back to the idea of ​​the real me, to her this new reality didn’t happen. She’s still stuck in the before.

We moved back to Belgium for him in 2021 and left everything behind in the hopes of getting him back. I tried everything I could, and he still refused time after time. I moved across the country to live next to him again like I used to, hoping that the sacrifice of distance would solve the problem… but he runs away as long as he is under a bad influence. My brother hasn’t spoken to me in years. He only recently returned to talking to my little sister, but it feels like walking on eggshells, one wrong move, and…

It’s very difficult for me to face the bad version of my brother because it hurts me as I still remember him in my head as before. And I don’t know how to break through his defenses and get to the true and loyal version of him, like before. The same version I saw when he was alone without the influence of outside people. Because under their influence he sees me through their eyes. When he’s alone, he remembers his responsibility as the eldest brother.

I think therein lies the fundamental difference I’ve observed between growing up in Israel versus abroad. Growing up in Israel, I was taught the importance of facing things together, even when it’s hard. Those that grow up in an individualistic culture definitely miss out on that aspect, from my experience in Belgium.

Everything I tried to write to my brother similarly, these past few years, how important it is not to give up, he dismissed without a second thought. I don’t even know if he read my many pleas till the end. (Maybe because by the time I learned how to express myself properly, it was already too late.) And maybe that’s why I’m afraid to try again and face the same painful rejection. I guess if there was a mediator then peace would seem more accessible. But no one around him encourages good behavior, unfortunately. I hope he will come back in our favor soon. But in the meantime, I am learning to allow myself to live even if it hurts.

Because for years, I felt that I couldn’t move on. I feared that maybe they wouldn’t give me my brother back because they’d think that I didn’t really need him if I moved on… They’ll give him back to me if I’m a good girl and I wait and wait. But if you’re reading this, staying frozen for years didn’t help me get him back, either. I thought maybe if I didn’t move he would come back faster because he would feel that we were waiting for him. But I’ve been in the same situation for years, and I don’t see any progress in my direction. I should probably try the second method of living as if he’s already back because if he were back then I’d allow myself to truly live life knowing that he’s by my side.

I used to read Beautiful Boy through angry eyes, angry at Nic most of all, but I’m glad that on this reread I’ve taken things with more peace in my heart. Learning to let go of things after you’ve tried your hardest, focusing on healing, and adding to your pile of good has been my focus these days.

What helps me is sometimes letting myself imagine I was born today and everything I have today is seen through new eyes and not through ones mourning the loss of the past.

Of course, there’s still a part of me that’s waiting for her brother to come back. Because how rare is it to have this person witness your childhood and go through this process of growing up together… But I’m not letting the waiting overtake my life anymore. I’ll wait, but I’ll also live.

Thank you, David Sheff, for writing Beautiful Boy and making me feel seen and understood.

“Here’s a note to the parents of addicted children: Choose your music carefully. Avoid Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” from the Polaroid or Kodak or whichever commercial, and the songs “Turn Around” and “Sunrise, Sunset” and—there are thousands more. Avoid Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” and this one, Eric Clapton’s song about his son. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” sneaked up on me one time. The music doesn’t have to be sentimental. Springsteen can be dangerous. John and Yoko. Björk. Dylan. I become overwhelmed when I hear Nirvana. I want to scream like Kurt Cobain. I want to scream at him. Music isn’t all that does it. There are millions of treacherous moments. Driving along Highway 1, I will see a peeling wave. Or I reach the fork where two roads meet near Rancho Nicasio, where we veered to the left in carpool. A shooting star on a still night at the crest of Olema Hill. With friends, I hear a good joke—one that Nic would appreciate. The kids do something funny or endearing. A story. A worn sweater. A movie. Feeling wind and looking up, riding my bike. A million moments.”

The songs I didn’t expect to hit personally, for me, are Hey Brother by Avicii and Fix You by Coldplay. Or every time I laugh at something funny, I think of my brother.

I felt the courage to post this today, on Yom HaZikaron (‘Memorial Day’), when my country is in mourning and feeling their grief acutely, and the words of Beautiful Boy have been echoing inside me.

Review: A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

“Why was he always so eager to exchange his family for someone else’s?”

A Spool of Blue Thread was my introduction to Anne Tyler in 2018. Since then I’ve read eight of her books; each contains its own gem.

Her writing shines the brightest in this book. The first chapter still hurts as much even on the second reread. It’s very fast-paced which is a great way to get sucked into the family dynamics, compared to the slowness of Tyler’s Noah’s compass and even Clock Dance, I could see why this was her most beloved novel. She shines the most here. On nearly every page I had something to note down that I appreciated observing through her watchful keen eyes and unexpected slants of vision.

A simple example of using language with meaning: “but it had the comfortably shabby air of a place whose inhabitants had long ago stopped seeing it.”

With that wording, she clicked something into place in my mind. I realized what it was I was seeing around me, things I’d long ago stopped noticing. Her writing makes you stop and really see the world around you. That’s why I gravitate toward her books.

The first chapter is like a whole mini story with Denny as the star, or rather his absence.

“It wasn’t right, Abby said. They hadn’t had him long enough. Children were supposed to stick around till eighteen, at the very least. (The girls hadn’t moved away even for college.) “It’s like he’s been stolen from us,” she told Red. “He was taken before his time!”

I felt her hurt acutely, similar to the sorrow felt in of Everything I Never Told You
wanting back what once was with a despairing “please.” I want to linger on this first chapter because it voiced so much.

“And whenever he did come home, he was a stranger. He had a different smell, no longer the musty-closet smell but something almost chemical, like new carpeting. He wore a Greek sailor’s cap that Abby (a product of the sixties) associated with the young Bob Dylan. And he spoke to his parents politely, but distantly. Did he resent them for shipping him off? But they hadn’t had a choice! No, his grudge must have gone farther back. ”

This worded precisely my hurt. This person who you look up to so much simply tolerates you now that they’ve changed, almost too much that you nearly don’t recognize them anymore.
And this unspooling of threads, looking at where it all went wrong and wanting to catch it before it all falls apart. This is why I read these books with introspective telltales, to have someone go inside my head and guide me through what I went through. Give it words and thus have the joy of putting into words the unwordable. Jonathan Safran Foer and Matan Yair excel at this, too.

I also came to appreciate the dynamic shown how siblings have a different connection than parents and children. Like his sister could get more out of Denny than his mother could.

“For weeks at a time he might call every Sunday until they grew to expect it, almost depend on it, but then he’d fall silent for months and they had no means of reaching him.”

Becoming hopeful on having him back in their lives. They’re starved for details of his life because that’s all they have to think of for months to come.

Anne Tyler paints a picture with the minute details that you forget with time doing its thing of deleting the details of the trauma to smooth over the hurt in order to function and not dwell on the past.

The first chapter charmed me, and in my memory from my first read, it was a sprawling story. But rereading and seeing it barely hits the 50 pages, left me a bit shocked. That’s where Anne Tyler’s magic enters. Every time I left a chapter wanting more and more, we’d get a sneak into someone else’s life and my hunger would satisfy.

“She liked to snuggle next to Abby and sound out the words to Hop on Pop, heaving a loud sigh of satisfaction whenever she finished a page.
By the time she left, she’d lost all her reserve. She stood in front of the train station holding Denny’s hand, waving like a maniac and shouting, “Bye-bye! See you! See everybody soon! Bye-bye!”

This is so observant because this passage plucked out a memory of mine as if she’s taken it from my mind herself. Anne Tyler knows so much. How does she remember so much, both the detail of the hurt caused by being left behind and the details of little kids and how they interact with the world?
She notices everything.

“How shocking, Abby told Red, that they were willing to settle for so little. She said, “Would you have believed it? Sometimes whole days go by when I don’t give him a thought. This is just not natural!”

This is the same hurt David Sheff wrote in his book about his son. Like we spent so many years together, watched him grow, used to watch him sleep, and now we’re settling for so little…

“It was really very hard to visualize Denny’s personal life.”

Like he’s on pause and only exists when in front of them because he doesn’t share when he’s away.
There’s a quote in the second chapter that perfectly worded this, how the memories are told from Junior’s POV so, of course, a scene stops existing as soon as he’s not a character in the scene.

“It almost seemed that when Junior left a scene, it had ceased to exist. Then he returned and everything started up again, brought to life by his whiny, thin voice and “He says to me …” and “Says I, I says …”

She paints a picture with her words.

Can you tell I can’t get enough of Anne Tyler’s writing? I love it for giving words to what can’t be clearly explained in words.

“But still, you know how it is when you’re missing a loved one. You try to turn every stranger into the person you were hoping for. You hear a certain piece of music and right away you tell yourself that he could have changed his clothing style, could have gained a ton of weight, could have acquired a car and then parked that car in front of another family’s house. “It’s him!” you say. “He came! We knew he would; we always …” But then you hear how pathetic you sound, and your words trail off into silence, and your heart breaks.”

This. This is why I read Anne Tyler. This packed the biggest punch. This is the perfect example to show to someone wondering what the hype is behind Anne Tyler’s books. This paragraph says so much.

Chapter two is about finally getting the house you dreamt of.

Anne Tyler was like let’s combine all my hurts in one book. She knows her audience well.

• Hurt of neglecting older brother
• Hurt of strangers living in your house

“So “this house” really meant “this family,” it seemed. The two were one and the same.”

The house symbolized their family!!

“One thing was a puzzle, though: despite Junior’s reported loquaciousness, his grandchildren never formed a very clear picture of him. Who was he, exactly? Where had he come from? For that matter, where had Linnie come from? Surely Red had some inkling—or his sister, more likely, since women were supposed to be more curious about such things. But no, they claimed they didn’t. (If they were to be believed.) And both Junior and Linnie were dead before their first grandchild turned two.
Also: was Junior insufferable, or was he likable? Bad, or good? The answer seemed to vary. On the one hand, his ambition was an embarrassment to all of them. They winced when they heard how slavishly he aped his social superiors. But when they considered his pinched circumstances, his nose-pressed-to-the-window wistfulness, and his dedication—his genius, in fact—they had to say, “Well …”
He was like anybody else, Red said. Insufferable and likable. Bad and good.
Nobody found this a satisfactory answer.”

I thought about this for days.

This book hangs onto Abby as the thread that holds them all together. The children and grandchildren spin in her orbit. So of course, any storyline containing her as the star had me spinning around her, as well. I couldn’t get enough of her. I especially liked how we got to hear throughout the book teasing about the family tale of how Abby and Red got together so that when we finally got to their story we felt like we were in on it, in on the family riddles.

That’s what makes up a family, the language you create, the stories you share and recycle. It’s what bonds you. Taylor Swift writes: You taught me a secret language I can’t speak with anyone else. And it lies at the heart of this book. I love how it builds on previous knowledge to make the joke or story richer.

“To a child, they must have looked like some happy, cozy club that only grown-ups could belong to.”

This line felt like watching back your own memories and seeing how you saw grown-ups as a kid and the flip of taking part in grown-up conversations as you yourself become an adult. This sentence contained both the child – the observer – and the grown-up – the observed.

“The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, “and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. ‘That’s what my experience has been,’ they say, and it gets folded in with the others—one more report on what living felt like. What it was like to be alive.”

I could picture this so well, it felt like what I always tell myself to remember from each season as it passes.
Just like there’s a Stiefvater reading experience, there’s a Tyler reading experience.
This book nailed it on the head. All her best moments shine here.

“It was exactly like a time trip. She was bobbing along in a time machine gazing out the window at one scene after another in no particular order. At one story after another. Oh, there’d been so many stories in her life! The Whitshanks claimed to have only two; she couldn’t imagine why. Why select just a certain few stories to define yourself? Abby had a wealth of them.”

This felt so melancholy. I loved that it reminded me of Noah’s Compass, talking about old people sitting and just watching their memories for hours and passing the afternoon this way.

“The most surprising details suddenly show up again! Tiny things, infinitesimal things. The other day I all at once recalled the exact turn of the wrist that I used to give the handle of the CorningWare saucepan I got for a wedding present.”

I love her ability to paint with details. It brought to mind what she shared in her interview with the guardian: “I’m more in touch with my emotions and the visceral sensory from childhood than any other part of life.” Her ability to conjure up such specific details of life are why I’m drawn to her books time and again.
Anytime I think I might’ve reached the end of what I want to share of her writing, I find another passage I want to make sure to write down so I won’t forget. Bear with me.

“Sometimes on her walks it would strike her that of all her original family, she was the only one left. Who would ever have dreamed that she’d be traveling through the world without them? ”

This made me stop cold. What a thought. The wording of this pinpointed the terrifying realization of how what you think is forevermore cannot ever last forever and ever.

“Children with her everywhere she went. It was both comforting and wearing. “Hand? Hand?” she used to say before she crossed a street. It came to her so clearly now: the stiff-armed reach out to her side with her palm facing backward, the confident expectation of some trusting little hand grabbing hers.”

This made me recognize something I hadn’t thought of, how long it’s been since I last had to hold the hand of my little sister to cross the road. And this made me realize how for granted I took time passing. Time is a thief.

“Then after she finished her morning chores Abby sat with him on the couch and read him picture books. He liked the ones with animals in them, she could tell, because sometimes when she was about to turn a page he would reach out a hand to hold it down so he could study it a while longer.”

This and the above “hand?” scene made me sad for a moment to not have those scenes anymore once the kids you know in your life grow up out of this stage. It made me understand why people keep having more kids, to not miss out on these moments.

“She settled him in the other twin bed in Denny’s room, and after she’d drawn up the blankets she hesitated a moment and then planted a kiss on his forehead. His skin was warm and slightly sweaty, as if he’d just expended some great effort.”

I love how adults are unsure what’s the right thing to do, but for kids, these moments grant so much warmth. This scene reminded me of going on a class trip and staying away from home for the first time as a little kid and having that teacher with my favorite perfume kiss my forehead goodnight. My memories jumble together as the years go by, especially as there are more of them to hold on to, so I’d completely forgotten this memory, but Anne Tyler’s writing resurfaced old memories.

“One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they’d felt all those years?”

I wanted her to show it’ll turn out all right. I have trust in Anne Tyler to heal old wounds with her stories.

A Spool of Blue Thread is always connected to The Dutch House by Ann Patchet in my mind. Both books house the same hurts build up over time living as a family, with the family house at the center of the tale to bear witness.

Read it, gift it, lend it!!

Review: Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

I don’t even know where to begin! It’s been so long since I’ve felt this excited about a book.

Sorrow and Bliss compelled me to understand why I stopped reviewing books — I rarely feel the same old thrill for the words I read. And it made me remember why I also started reviewing books: When I physically can’t stop writing about my reading experience because the words create such a satisfactory reading experience, and I don’t want to ever forget them.  That’s how I know a book is good: when I feel compelled to write down everything I loved because I don’t want to forget my first experience reading it. Returning to reread what impressed me always feels like time-traveling back to the past with fresh eyes. I’m savoring my reviews now for the best of books. Sorrow and Bliss can get all the stars from me.

In short, I felt seen. However, I like to go into detail, so let me share what I loved (also so I can come back and reread my favorite parts):

The first signs of the brilliancy that Sorrow and Bliss would come to hold happened before I even opened up the book: I did not expect a blurb by Ann Patchett in this book. It’s always a great sign when your favorite author shares their appreciation for a book. She talks and writes like how I think, and it’s beyond gratifying getting to find another kindred spirit to add to the list. That’s why I read: To feel seen and understood.

I have so much praise to share that I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll break it down in bullet points:

The heart of this book for me is when it shows us a glimpse into the language you create when sharing your days together with others. The inside jokes and shared glances say it all, it takes a formidable writer to translate that feeling to the page. Meg Mason has been added to my list of authors to keep watch over for any new releases. Her way with words and being able to name unnameable feelings is magic.

“Two things that when you put them together in a poem make the reader feel whatever emotion you want them to so you don’t have to expressly name it. ”

This says it all. Typing up quotes from this book feels like in the movie The Words: “Rory types the manuscript into his laptop to know what it feels like to write something truly great, even if it’s only pretend.”

The author possesses a talent for making you sink into each scene. From the very first page. There’s no wasted time on “previously on” to get to know the characters. No. It’s straight into the scene, and it felt exactly right.

This is where I’d like to share some quotes because her writing speaks better than anything I can think to say.

“My perception of Winsome belonged to my mother — I thought of her as old, punctilious, someone without an interior life or worthwhile passions. That was the first time I saw her for myself.”

What a keen eye for writing, paying attention to minute details, like all my favorite authors: Ann Patchett, Maggie Stiefvater, Matan Yair…

“We were both, it transpired, anxious not to annoy the other, which was why I worked out how to eat an apple in absolute silence –by cutting it into sixteenths and holding each piece in my mouth until it dissolved like a wafer ”

This paints social anxiety at its most delicate. 

“I liked it there but the novel kept steering itself towards autobiography and I couldn’t steer it back. I imagined myself speaking at a writers’ festival and being asked by someone in the audience how much of the book was based on my own life. I would have to say all of it! There’s not a single shred of invention in its four hundred pages! ”

I loved the above because it felt like breaking the fourth wall.

The two main stars, for me, were Patrick (the love interest), and Ingrid (the main character’s sister). I can go into heavy detail. And I will. I will go into heavy detail. I simply loved young Patrick and how when he enters the scene, Taylor Swift’s “say my name and everything just stops” was on loop in my mind because he possesses this calm with him wherever he goes. Beyond talented to translate that feeling to the page.

Why do I love Ingrid? This says it all:

“Without them I had no proof that I wasn’t married to a man who, Ingrid told me while evacuating me from his apartment, scored nine out of ten on an online questionnaire she had done on his behalf called Are You a Sociopath?.”

This is what they mean when they say this book is funny. Ultra original humor that keeps shining through Ingrid and why she quickly came to be my favorite.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off of Patrick. I don’t know how but there were pages I read where it felt so warm and homely. It just feels like observing friends that care about each other talking in real life. And seeing it replicated and being able to relive it through her words felt like magic.

“Patrick made a gesture of moving along to make more room, although there was none. Sitting between Patrick and Oliver, my arms pressed against theirs, all I wanted to do was stay there and watch competition darts while my cold empty body absorbed their warmth. The only thing Patrick said, turning his head but avoiding my eye, was, ‘I hope you’re okay.’

He’s enchanting.

“I had never consciously considered any mannerism or physical aspect of his, but everything about him – the width of his shoulders, the shape of his back, the way he walked with his hands pressed so deep into his pockets that his arms were straight and the insides of his elbows faced forwards – were as familiar to me in that moment as any known fact or person in my life.”

The way she writes him makes him so attractive. Romance authors should take note.

This next scene made my heart skip a beat because the longing had been there for so long:

“I felt myself falling asleep and just before I did, someone shifting so that my heavy head could rest against their shoulder.”

“The television was off and the windows black when I woke up. Only Patrick was still in the room. I was lying on my side, curled around a cushion. My head was in his lap. As soon I moved, he shot up and went over to the bookcases on the other side of the room, as though he’d been waiting for his opportunity to retrieve the Encyclopaedia of Middle English from my father’s shelves, which he did, then opened at random and stood reading. I asked him what time it was and where my cousins were. It was midnight, Nicholas had gone to bed and, he said, Oliver left a while ago.
‘Why didn’t you go with him?’
Patrick hesitated. ‘I didn’t want to wake you up.”

THIS SCREAMS JIM AND PAM!!!! He’s beyond kind and respectful.

“Is this your first time with lying, Patrick? You’re not very good at it. Seriously, why didn’t you go with Oliver?’
Patrick cleared his throat. ‘I just thought it probably hasn’t been the best day and maybe you’d want company when you woke up. But you’re absolutely fine, so that’s great. I’ll get going.”

He notices her when everyone else doesn’t. He gets her.

“I stepped back to let it fall over. I didn’t know Patrick was already behind me, and I stumbled against him. He put his hands on my waist and because he did not take them away, even after I had righted myself, I said, ‘Do you love me Patrick?’”

This little interaction boosted my dopamine levels sky high reading this the first time. I reread it five times in a row until it didn’t have the same effect anymore.

I love the intimacy of them finally being alone, after years and years, and you can feel his immense love for her through his actions — like his shyness around her and being scared to confess his feelings because she doesn’t even know the start of it.

“I wanted to see him but not as I was.”

This says so much!! She’s like Matan Yair, saying something complicated in a simple way. Meaning, I want to see him but I hate being perceived right now because I’m not at my best.

“I was only conscious of myself in terms of Patrick; whether I was, just then, being looked at by him, if so how he perceived me. My bearing and my expression, the direction of my gaze – it was all for Patrick.”

This is very Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, how they’re ultra aware of being perceived by their love interest.

“and when I replayed it, I could see his goodness. And I was alone so much, there was comfort in remembering Patrick as good, in imagining his sameness, imagining he was with me as I walked along an unpopulated street or marked hours in an uncustomered shop. ”

Crushes to keep your mind occupied. Meg Mason gets my thinking.

“And the way I felt, seeing him for the first time in four years, was the way I felt every time I saw him in public all the years we were together. If I arrived somewhere and saw him already waiting for me, or walking in my direction, if he was talking to someone on the other side of a room – it wasn’t a thrill, a rush of affection, or pleasure. Then, in the church, I didn’t know what it was and spent all of the service trying to diagnose it. At the end of the service, Patrick smiled at me once more as I moved back to the altar and I felt it again, so much from my core that it was difficult to keep going, to follow Ingrid and Hamish out, Patrick further and further behind me.”

This says so much because of the follow-up.

“It’s like, one second you can be alone and terrified in a crowd of scary idiots and the next you know you’re completely safe.’
Oliver asked where their mother had been.
Jessamine said she didn’t know. ‘That isn’t the point of the story.’
‘What was the point? It was bloody long.’
‘Oliver, shut up. I don’t know.’ She flicked her hair. ‘Just that feeling of like, thank God when you see that person. Martha, do you know what I’m talking about?’
I said yes. Thank God is how I felt when I saw Patrick that day. Not a thrill or affection or pleasure. Visceral relief.”

This echoed in my mind days after reading because it explains so much.

I also loved the many callbacks in the book. Everything is talked about even if interrupted in the middle. She trusts us to remember the seed she planted earlier because we care for the story. It makes you appreciate the novel because everything has a purpose, and it makes you want to pay close attention to all the easter eggs that will reveal themselves.

“Why he felt like he had to be such a good boy when we were a pack of shits.
Patrick said, ‘You weren’t trying to be invited back.’
Three of us at once said God, very quietly.”

Her lines pack quite the punch. She’s quiet but deathly with unraveling them.

“The light came on when he started the car and Patrick glanced down for the gearstick. My gaze had followed his and in the second before it was dark again, I noticed his hand and his wrist, and the way the tendons moved as he tightened his grip, and as he let go and moved it to the wheel, the run of his forearm below his rolled-up shirtsleeve. ”

1. I love the callback to her saying when already married to him, that she loves his hands.
2. Her writing Patrick is beyond attractive, it’s like when Martha tries writing her novel and it kept putting Patrick as the main character. He has this energy around him that makes him take up all the room in your head — I physically can’t stop reading and felt repeatedly drawn throughout the day to return to this book to see glimpses of him in her youth.

“It finished and I tried to play it again but could not find the button. I was surprised by Patrick reaching for my hand and transferring it back to my lap. I asked if I could have a wine gum, already picking up the packet and tearing it open, the sensation of contact still on my skin.”

Hot!! This is what makes up a romance. Paying attention to their hands and feeling their eyes on you and those little moments of intimacy with their hands touching yours. That first transformation from friends to something more is everything. Their attraction is imminent. Young Patrick was beyond endearing.

“I could see Patrick was annoyed by the over and over of it – having to separate, having to find each other again a second later. For me it was so many tiny bursts, a salvo, of the Thank God feeling, which was why I wanted to keep walking. Finally, as a couple unready to give up their dream of rollerblading hand in hand down the Thames came towards us, he got my hand and pulled me to one side.”

She has a secret language with herself, as well, about the relief – thinking back to her earlier understanding of her feelings for Patrick.

“When Patrick pulled me out of their way, it had been so that my back was against the plinth of a statue and when the rollerbladers turned around and came back, uncoupled and both out of control, he was forced to step in so that we were face to face and close enough that breathing out, our bodies were barely separate. I wondered if Patrick was aware of it too, at all or as powerfully as I was, before he said, ‘This way, then,’ and led off in the direction of his flat.”

I would read any romance novel written by Meg Mason.

“I went to the airport to meet Patrick, early in the morning, the day before Christmas. We hugged each other like two people who had no practical experience of embracing, had only taught themselves the theory from a poorly worded manual.
He did not smell amazing. He had a very saddening beard. But, I said, aside from that I was so happy to see him. I did not say, beyond description, beyond what I had imagined.
Patrick said you too. And my name. ‘You too Martha.”

This is so realistic its hurts. It hurts because it feels attainable, unlike typical romance books which you read for escapism because none of what you read seems like it’s set in real life. But this felt so real, I felt a pang in my heart.

“Patrick had knocked and asked if he could come in. I was crying and couldn’t get the air to say anything. He came over and felt my forehead, then said he was going to go and get me a glass of water. When he came back, he asked me if I wanted to watch a movie and – I remember – if I was okay with him sitting on the bed next to me, he said ‘with my legs up I mean.’ I moved over a little bit and while he was choosing something on my laptop, he said, ‘Sorry you’re not feeling great.’ I had known Patrick for so long. Most of the time – still sometimes then – my ordinary presence made him nervous. This way, he was so calm.”

His respect for her is shown through his actions. He’s so finely tuned to her. This book excels at making their interactions make my heart beat faster like it would in real life.

“He found the box and took the band out. He held it out, between two fingers. It was amazing. Patrick said, ‘As it turns out Martha, despite what I may have said at different times, I have been in love with you for fifteen years. Since the moment you spat this onto my arm.’ It was the rubber band from my braces.”

This made me close my eyes in awe. The most important callback. This moment was worth it all.

“We lay for so long afterwards, facing each other in the dark, not talking, our breath in the same pattern, our stomachs touching. We went to sleep that way and woke up that way. It was the happiest I have ever felt.”

Feeling those sparks in my hands is when I know it’s good.

I wish the author would’ve let us sink more into their good days before dropping the bad on us. I will say, I appreciated that Patrick remained respecting even after she had done some serious damage to him. He didn’t hurt her because he’s not that kind of guy. I love when your idea of a guy and the reality matches because then you weren’t delusional to think he’s kind but rather he actually is. Those types of men are rare.

“Martha,’ he said afterwards, lying next to me. ‘Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.’ That is what life was, and how it continued for three years after that. The ratios changing on their own, broken, completely fine, a holiday, a leaking pipe, new sheets, happy birthday, a technician between nine and three, a bird flew into the window, I want to die, please, I can’t breathe, I think it’s a lunch thing, I love you, I can’t do this any more, both of us thinking it would be like that forever.”

Sorrow and Bliss felt very healing to read because it’s like my all-time teen favorite Fangirl but seeing the characters grown up. Featuring that same close dynamic between sisters, Patrick being the calm golden boy to her stormy weather.

I always wonder why I care so much about the tiny details and the thrill they give me. Then I read this online: “That’s the thing about people who haven’t been loved much. They think about every kind gesture, the slightest touch of fingers, kind smiles, random acts of love, and intimacy in every small thing done. They find that love wherever they can cause it was never given to them freely. They don’t ask for love, they search for it everywhere.”

The importanance of what Winsome said about keeping on being the sister. The importance of not disconnecting from family and instead airing your troubles and seeing them change to better themselves  — very healing to read. I keep thinking of this when it comes to the main character’s mother.

“How did you put up with my mother for so long?’
She said oh. Indeed. And then, ‘I suppose because I’ve always been able to remember what she was like before our mother died and I loved her enough to last.’
‘Were you ever tempted just to give up on her?’
‘Daily, I suppose. But you forget, Martha, I was an adult then and she was a child. I knew who she was meant to be. That is, who she would have been had our mother not died or perhaps, if we had had a different mother entirely. I would like to say I did my best, but I was not an adequate substitute.”

This. This passage right here was worth it all just to reach it. This put years of pain into words. That potential of your person keeps you going even when everything seems lost.

I spent days after, thinking about all that I had read. To save this review from turning into a novel, I will conclude by saying: READ THIS BOOK!!! This novel is powerful in its scope of unraveling the union and separation and healing separately in order to regrow back together. Beyond powerful to read this account. I WANT MORE!!!