If you haven’t read this novel already, don’t go on reading my post.

I am warning you! I am about to ruin it for you, forever.

I have picked it up in an airport. Mainly because the words end and loneliness get me every time. You can’t help but feel lonely in airports and you tend to be hopeful for anything telling you there is an end to it. And partly because I thought I would finally be able to write that post about loneliness, the one I was telling myself I would write for almost two years now. I can’t deny that I love the colours of its cover either. All I knew about the novel before I started reading is that it won some prize and that it is originally written in German.

The book doesn’t keep its promise. Loneliness is there as ever. The first events set a whole new expectation about the novel. So, I was angry from the very beginning. First because I was expecting a different plot. And second, because a huge part discusses the characters’ adolescence life. We hear people say I had a happy childhood or sad one, but have you ever heard one says good things about being a teenager? I wanted the events to move quickly. I was miserable because that is what teenagers always feel right?

I can’t tell you when exactly I fell in love with the novel. Or why precisely.

May be because I could relate so much with the narrator, his dream world and reverie. Or his hard questions and observant eyes. Or maybe because I am just like what his wife said about him” You are a rememberer and preserver, you just can’t help it”

I hated the anticlimax events. I am usually a fan of logical endings. But this time I would kill for a happy one. They have been through too much for God’s sake.

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth”

The novel was way too real. Emotions seeps like a faulty faucet first, then flood like an angry river. You can’t help but feel drawing while reading. I often wonder how people are defined by their loses. This novel gave me too many answers. I can barely handle it.

The novel gave me a question I know will occupy my mind for a long time. “There’ve been so many other paths in my life so many possibilities of being someone different…the question is, what wouldn’t be different? What would be the immutable part of you? The bit that would stay the same in every life, no matter what course it took? Are there elements in us that survive everything?

And with that quote I wish you all a peaceful night!