Such Mixed Feelings About This Book
Amazing first 100 pages
Really the story of two experiences. In the first 100 pages, I was deeply invested in the character building and the interesting setting. It’s clear that there will be darkness in the book, but the unrelenting horrors visited upon one character simply become overwhelming and reading the end of the book was a slog.
Everything in the book operates at 19/10. The characters are the best lawyers, best actors, best artists, and best architects, while the horrors are the worst imaginable. By the end, nothing seemed believable.
All that being said, there are some beautiful passages in this book. The writing is excellent, despite the increasingly implausible plot.
JB wore a perpetual expression of mild disbelief while at his job, both that he should be working at all and that no one had yet thought to recognize his special genius.
You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.
All the most terrifying ifs involve people. All the good ones do as well.
Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.
If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.
Everything he has learned tells him to leave; Everything he has wished for tells him to stay.
But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.
