Who am I? I asked myself this question immediately following the finishing of this book and I feel like if Foer knew that, he’d either be pleased or he’d find me pretentious. But I didn’t ask it out of anything other than a gut reaction to the book ending. Foer is able to wield emotion like a sword, but with enough subtlety that it hits you after you’ve gone by a few pages, and you have to pause and sit in the feeling for a moment before you can go forward. It took me a bit to get into this book. I honestly didn’t remember why I picked it up (it’s got a sticker from the bargain bin on the back, so that’s the most likely reason, and I know I like his writing style, so I solved my own mystery), and as I read about the marriage of Jacob and Julia, I questioned even more why I grabbed it. It was about a loveless marriage, but also a marriage full of too much love. The kind of love you think is stagnant, but is actually hiding behind hurt. Unspeakable only because to voice the hurt would make it known to those who haven’t hurt you, but those you love and you don’t want to show them your vulnerability.
That kind of love is my favorite. And as I was slowly absorbed into the unfolding of this marriage, the explosion of a worldwide crisis of possible war, the outlook on Jewish people by the rest of the world, it all settles together in such a way you forget you’re reading about something heartbreaking. I think love is the entire theme of the whole book. There’s familial, romantic, platonic–it’s all in there. It’s the love that hurts, but the impermanence of pain is what draws me to it. It’s the understanding that while what I feel might be in the realm of anguish, it is not forever and I will be okay.
I told a friend of mine about some of this, my reaction to the book. But it was 3 a.m. and I’d had to read a brain numbing romance novel to get my head to calm down (seriously, all those people need to do is talk to each other. The lack of common sense and communication in those books is astonishing, but then I realize it’s real life in a way we aren’t ready to admit to, which I also know sounds like the opposite of calming my brain down). A sense of yearning took over, and I was filled with wanting. To be enough, to be wanted. And the part that makes my heart break is I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to accept that I am already good enough. I am wanted. Just as I am. It causes an ache in my ribs. When I breathe. I inhale, almost like when I run, and the life that fills me also takes my breath away.
The last time I wrote in my physical journal, I started a list of resolutions and I will expand on it offline. I know you might be wondering why this has anything to do with the book of this post, but I’ll get there. A person I follow on YouTube was talking in a recent video about how she calls resolutions her “intentions.” What does she intend for herself? The start of a new year, the reset, the fresh feeling. Some part of me that lingers in my self-hate is disgusted by the positivity of it.
But I think about a sunrise. A sunrise after walking all night, being so stuck in my head, unable to fully see even though all I’ve been doing is looking.
The sky lightens, letting the earth know what’s coming, but it’s that first burst of bright. That explosion of color that scars the sky and yet whispers hello.
My hope lives there. In that moment, that crack of a new day. Flash in the pan, almost. It holds me, though. Gives me enough courage to approach life one day at a time until a year passes and I am no longer witnessing the sunrise, I am the sunrise.
That’s who I am. I am hope, burning across the morning dimness with a gasp of colors. I am not ending. I am beginning and I am afraid. Afraid of understanding. Afraid of seeing. Not of failure, because I’m not failing.
I am becoming.
And that’s what this book did for me. I don’t know that I would say Foer is my favorite author, but he writes in a way that helps the world make sense as I see it. While I’m not a middle-aged Jewish man, or his wife, or their three sons, I have felt at times what they have, and seeing emotions I know so well, written in a way that feels like I’ve been flayed while saying thank you is something I don’t know I’d get from anyone else.
I give this book an 8.5/10
*******I read the 2016 Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardback edition*******
salisbury.fake 