Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman

Books are made to let you escape the reality of life, which is, let's be honest, rather harsh. However, some books - many - are even harsher than your daily life, and that is what Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is. But don't get me wrong, this novel was an amazing read, but instead of making the reader escape from a sometimes sad and harsh reality, it made him/her dive into an even harsher one. 

Eleanor Oliphant believes to be happy with her life. Alone, no friends, an ok place to live in, a job to pay the bills, no love life, but well, that is fine for her. Until the day she realizes there is much more to it than what she's got. A series of events make her realize the lacks in her life, and even with the scars she carries from a traumatic and terrible past, she now wants better. Yet nothing is that easy, and this road to happiness will be chaotic. Because you can never leave the past behind. 

This novel was more than a story, it was also an eye opening book about mental issues and traumatizes, a story showing us that the dream lives we see on Instagram and others social media, is not everyone's. Gail Honeyman, with her first novel  achieves to write an amazing story, full of feelings. We go from laughter to tears, and we fall in love with every character of the book. But what I liked most about this novel was the realism of it, the fact that to read it was not to escape our day to day life, but to realize that everybody struggles in life, that sometimes their issues are much harder to overcome than what we have imagined, that life is not that easy for anybody. But Gail Honeyman goes further, and teach us a real life lesson: observe, and help if you can, and trust her, you can. Friendship is another very strong theme of this novel, and even if Eleanor has been unhappy and unlucky for years, her terrible past led her to amazing new friendships, taking her on a new road.

I won't say more, cause I might be tempted to tell you the story from A to Z, or worse, to copy the whole book here. Because to review this book, I'll just have to say that I did not want it to end. 

xo

Amy

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Book Review: 'Anna Karenina', Tolstoi

To summarize this book is an impossible task. It took a massive part of my Summer to get through it, but I managed, and I am now proud and happy to declare that I have finally read Anna Karenina. What an achievement for a bookworm! But today I have no idea what to tell you about this novel. As I started with, this book is impossible to summarize. The characters are too numerous, the twists too crazy and, once again, numerous, and the feelings which emanate from it too hard to even start to explain. 

Well, from this perspective, I have nothing to tell you about my reading. That's a lie, I have actually loads to say, even if I can't summarize or tell anything about the plot. Tolstoi's book is all about the Russian high society, how they interact, how they live, what is at steak in their lives, and what do those people feel. Many other characters from various spheres of the society are also depicted by the novelist, who perfectly explains the social gaps and relationships between them. Yet the focus is still the nobility, obviously Anna Karenina herself, and the other characters whom are gravitating around her and interacting in her story. What a character. Anna is a woman you fall in love with, a woman you hate few chapters later, and most of all, a woman you understand and identify to. I understood her feelings, her anger and her love, her sadness and her craziness. Tolstoi achieved to build a real human character. Not only a character coming out of a novel, but a real woman, whom could be your friend, your sister, yourself. She is real because she feels and has sometimes the impossibility to explain what she feels, like any human does. But Anna is not the only master piece of the novel. Each character embodies to the perfection the human conditions, the questions we are asking ourselves, the feelings we are trying to reach, or to avoid. 

Life and its meaning are questioned all along this book, and more that telling the story of characters, this novel becomes a philosophical one, one which makes you stop reading and think. Think about life, think about your condition, about who you are, what you are doing, what you want. That is why Anna Karenina is such a masterpiece, such a reference in the literature sphere. It is because it is more than words, more than a story printed on paper. It is a life lesson, a book that changes the way you see life, the way you live it. Every character is an example and teaches you something, every character is a little bit of you. 

xo

Amy

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Book Review: 'Call Me By Your Name', André Aciman

Few weeks ago, I told you about my love for the movie 'Call Me By Your Name'. It left me so heartwrentched and romantic that I was sure I would never find such a romance. Until I read the book, which I finished few weeks ago. Normally I am more the kind of person who reads the book then watches the movie, but this time the hype got me, and to be fairly honest I decided to watch it mainly because I did not know what to watch and heard so many good things about it that I was sure to not like it. Jesus, that sounds so elitist! My apologies. But anyway, I watched the movie before reading the novel, and I could not undo that: now I had to do things the other way round. So I went and bought the book, and read it in about a week. To be fair it was quite nice to put faces on names and landscapes on descriptions, yet I hated knowing what was coming next, or worse, waiting for a scene in particular - the ending obviously. But I went through it, and as the end was coming, holding my breath, I realized that this was actually not the end. I won't spoil anything if some of you want to read the novel, but to keep it short, a whole part of the book has been deleted in the movie. And well, this last part was just the most beautiful and heartwrentching, in my view. The novel, with this last chapter, took a whole other dimension. Now it was not only about a love story between two young lovers, lasting for a short Summer, but the story of a love living for a lifetime. Actually, when I look at the movie and at the novel in their whole, I see two different narratives, two different messages, two different loves. Which is not a bad thing, because I had the possibility to be surprised anyway, which was very much pleasant. If you read the book and watched the movie, please let me know in the comments what you thought of them! I am really curious to have an external point of view coming in to ruin mine. Yet I don't know, I think that this different ending made me love the novel even more than the movie. And I am kind of sad that everybody is raving about Timothy Chalamet, when the Elio of the book is just a thousand time more beautiful.

xo

Amy

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Call me by your name

Finally, I watched "Call me by your name". I know, I am late and way behind, but better late than never right? I think what kept me from watching it was all the buzz going around it. I tend to avoid those big production Hollywood is completely mad about. Since few months now I am trying to open myself to movies that are out of the American big production zone, and we are lucky enough to have an amazing independent cinema in Amsterdam, where you can go and see movies that you won't see anywhere else, old or recent, American or Polish, no matter, the organizer of those projections is all about the unusual. And to see those movies kind of closed me from what is trending. But Estée Lalonde, constantly raving about it, convinced me to have a look. And this movie was showed at Sundance, and well, this finished to get me. So I watched it few weeks ago, and well, I have fallen in love with it. The story is so beautiful, the characters so deep and real, it is a real qualitative movie for me. A gay romance with no drama is already something worst having a look at. For once, gay love stories are approached without any health issues, any family drama where parents are homophobic, or one of the character has a wife. I mean, this movie was heart wrenching, and I cried my eyes out, but it was all about love, not about gay drama. 

The aesthetic of the movie was also so significant, the filming location, the colors, the lifestyle, but also the soundtrack participated in the creation of this real but beautiful universe, where people are falling in love for real. Luca Guadagnino created a touching movie where you can't help but fall in love with the romance happening in front of your mesmerized gaze. Now I cannot wait to start reading the book, and for once it does not matter that I saw the movie before, because it was simply a beautiful piece of art. A love story to fall in love with. 

xo

Amy

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Book Review: ‘Idaho’, Emily Ruskovich

It has been a while since I did my last book review. This does not mean that I haven't been reading since December, simply that he book I picked did not especially marked me, at least not enough for me to recommend them. They were whether too 'simple', whether did not achieve to grip me. But lastly, when I was home for a two week holiday, I started reading Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich, a debate novel. I stumbled upon this book completely by change, in the most hazardous way. I went to Utrecht with my boyfriend last February, and we missed our train back to Amsterdam. So we decided to have a walk around the station shops while waiting for the next one. We entered a shop which sold magazines, bits and bobs, and had a small table where were displayed English books. I took a look real quickly, we did not have much time, and I immediately fell in love with the book cover of Idaho, but also the title. When reading the few lines of the plot on the back cover, I knew I couldn't leave Utrecht without this novel. The storyline? Wade, years ago, was married to Jenny. Jenny, one day, killed their younger daughter May, and June, her older sister, ran away, never to be found again. Jenny is now in jail, and Wade married to Ann. Ann who know everything about this terrible story. But Wade starts to forget. Dementia hits him in his still young years, and he soon forget the once existence of Jenny, May, and June. But Ann cannot forget, and starts to live a life haunted by those three females, not part of their life anymore. 

This book is so gripping, I could not let it down. All along, I was looking for answers, for explanations, but it would have been a too common novel if the aim was simply to lead us to an explanation of that dramatic day. The amazing writing forced me to turn page after page, holding my breath, not able to get out of the story. This book is not an investigation. It is a novel about loss and an impossible mourning, about time and memory fading away while life never stops its stream to let you catch your breath. An incredible book that I'm sure I will never forget. A story that will break your heart and leave you with tears in your eyes from start until end. A master piece.

xo

Amy

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