Friday, June 8, 2012

everything beautiful began after

Today I thought we could take a break from the Colombian recaps. The weather in New York is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm currently doing everything in my power not to drop all my responsibilities, walk over to Central Park, and curl up with a new book. My most recent recommendation? A serendipitous find. I truly love bookstores but it's not every day that I feel compelled to invest in a novel I've never heard of by an author I'm unfamiliar with; unless I stumble upon something like...
A little over a month ago (while in Syracuse), I picked up Simon Van Booy's Everything Beautiful Began After without knowing anything other than the opinions of a few authors and publications. After having read it, I think Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain said it best: "Achingly beautiful, this book illuminates the need in us all for true connection in a life that often renders itself in fragments and artifacts and small bursts of color." I don't think I've ever read anything that has been able to express the most complicated of sentiments in such beautifully accurate words. I practically fell in love with love. The story itself was quite good as well.
"He was certainly handsome, but for her it was more, as though in every moment, in every word and gesture she found herself thrilled - as though a spell had been cast and his mere presence filled her with an unimaginable happiness that was without reason or condition."
"He reached for her hand in the darkness and together they fell from this world into another."
"What couldn't be felt in real life could be felt through language - through the experience of another by the setting of marks upon a page. 
It was unthinkable, yet it worked."
". . . And for the past 5,000 years there has been a thread running through humanity keeping it together, so that we may know a person's intermost feelings without ever having known them personally. . ."
"But there was something about her that was deeper and braver - something about her that compelled Henry beyond the details and feelings of the moment, as though they were both tethered to the same point in the future."
"He could see that it upset her, and it was when he felt closest to her - when he knew she was capable of understanding him."
"Love is like life but longer."

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