By: Michelle Yeung
"We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.”
The Opposite of Loneliness is a posthumous collection of stories and essays written by the late Yale University graduate Marina Keegan. Through her work, Keegan showed that there are few things in life more incredible than being young and hopeful and endlessly frustrated.
“We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time,” she said. Perhaps that’s why her words resonate with me so deeply – like her, the possibility of youth baffles me.
These are stories about falling in love and falling out of love, late-night drinking and early morning hangovers. They are stories about balancing the recklessness of youth with the responsibilities of adulthood, about the moments we realize the mortality of our parents, about the late nights spent wondering whether we love what we do enough to be poor. She perfectly captures what it’s like to be at the cusp of adulthood. This is what makes her work so powerful – it’s incredibly relatable.
But her collection of stories do not stay in the confines of university; it spans the world, from a submarine stuck undersea to a military base in Baghdad to her 1990 Toyota Camry in her driveway back home. In Against the Grain, she discusses living with celiac disease. In Reading Aloud, she dives into the relationship between a blind man and a naked woman. In Why We Care About Whales, she wonders why people are so strange about animals, especially large ones. Each story is about something entirely different, but all are entertaining as they are thought-provoking. It isn’t Keegan’s death that captivates people – it is her charm and raw, indisputable talent. She is young, but not naive. She is ingenious. She is a wordsmith. She can craft a beautiful, poetic sentence just to hit you in the face with a blunt and evocative statement.
The Opposite of Loneliness is an ode to youthful exuberance, a symphony for those who are equal parts fearless and afraid. It is a collection of ballads and rap remixes and alternative rock medleys; there’s something for everyone. Pick it up when you’re feeling a little lonely and you’ll know that there is someone else in this vast, unforgiving world who feels the same. You will be reminded of all that’s out there just waiting for you to grab hold of. Marina Keegan has left behind an anthem of salvaged hope, one that I will put on repeat for a very long time.
Drago Jančar’s The Tree With No Name was published in his native Slovenia in 2008 and only managed to enjoy a release in English this year. It’s a shame that it wasn’t translated sooner.
Always a controversial figure in his homeland, Jančar turns his eyes to the grim past that haunts all former Yugoslav nations, but looks further than most. Instead of dealing with Slovenia’s hand in the dissolution of the Yugoslavian republic, The Tree With No Name splits most of its time between modern Ljubljana and the tail end of the Second World War.
Known for his penchant for modernist techniques, Jančar opens the novel from the middle of the story, with the first chapter readers see being 87. It is there we meet Janez Lipnik, an archivist and possessor of the most quintessential Slovenian name one could think of. Like the reader, Janez is befuddled to find himself on a country road after climbing a tree that bears close resemblance to one in a Slovenian fable that his mother told him as a child.
When he wanders upon a schoolhouse in the woods and somehow compels the pretty teacher there to open the door for him, we aren’t yet sure whether or not Janez is dreaming. When the woman’s lover comes home and is revealed to be Aleksij Grgurevič, a captain of the Slovenian Home Guard, we are further compelled to wonder what circumstances led Janez here.
After a partisan siege that Janez barely survives, the story shifts, and we are thrust into the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana in spring of 2000. A younger Janez is in a bustling shopping mall, a mecca of the post-socialist state. Janez is melancholic, and his thoughts soon shift to how his life and marriage have derailed in three weeks.
As an archivist, Janez has the mundane job of settling old land disputes and other trivial civic matters. His marriage to Marijana, a professor, might not be the most exciting, but memories of happier times exist. It is when Janez is confronted with these memories that he struggles to cope with his current challenges.
After finding the journal of a sex addict from the Second World War, Janez becomes obsessed with uncovering the writer’s identity. He spends weekends at the office to Marijana’s detriment, and increasingly becomes lost in the pages and consequently shoves aside all other work. For a long time, Janez romanticizes his trip with Marijana to an island right before the full onslaught of the Yugoslavian War, but he is crushed to hear that she may have taken the same trip with a sleazy co-worker of his.
Janez’s increasing obsession with the journal renders him a mess. Unable to confront Marijana with his accusation, Janez becomes increasingly passive-aggressive until she cannot bear it and moves back in with her parents. This abrupt change leads Janez to reminisce about his father who, in episodes similar to those that appeared in Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, suffered from PTSD and made Janez get up in the wee hours of the night to sing for his drunken war friends.
With a stunning conclusion that revolves around one of the most horrific war crimes committed in Slovenia at the end of the Second World War, The Tree With No Name is a brave, unflinching look at the past that scorns nationalistic sentimentality in favour of astute reflection.
Bookended by weeks of coma-inducing monotony in Hamilton, my trip to New York City in June was the clear highlight of my summer. It was my first time in the bustling metropolis and after a week of excitement I was glad that I was able to take in the splendours the city had to offer on my own terms.
Perusing the titles available at The Strand, wandering Columbia’s campus, seeking shelter from a storm in the New York Public Library, lusting after the #menswear that SoHo had to offer, and enjoying the amazing pizza at Grimaldi’s were terrific experiences. So was attending a gallery opening, and sitting down with Noah Callahan-Bever, editor-in-chief of Complex magazine, in his mid-town office to shoot the shit about rap and his relationship with Kanye. In talking to my writer friends there, I had never felt so stimulated and excited about what life had to offer after school.
But what makes me laugh fondly the most in retrospect is that I had three opportunities to see Karl Ove Knausgaard speak and missed them all through some cruel twist of fate. The renowned Norwegian writer had been in the city to promote the release of the newly translated third iteration of his six-volume autobiographical novel, entitled My Struggle.
Despite bearing a title reminiscent of Hitler’s own book of the same name, the autobiographical novel boasts much more appeal than one would think when moving past its immediate shock value.
What began as a free-flowing exercise of unchecked writing about his own life that Knausgaard hoped would help him out of a creative block in turn leveraged him to a level of superstardom that has forced him to abandon his life in Stockholm and move his family to the countryside. Knausgaard undertook the project unaware that it would displace him from his comfortable role as a well-respected figure in the Scandinavian literary scene, to a writer who would fiercely divide the press and public on the topic of how much of one’s private life is appropriate to expose.
Growing up in Norway in the 1970’s, Knausgaard recently told the Evening Standard that the order of the day was, “you don’t cry, and you don’t complain.” Knausgaard’s own father was adamant in enforcing this rigidness in his son, and it would psychologically scar the young Knausgaard to the point where he became afraid of his father. The struggle in the title is a reference to the weight that Knausgaard’s father would have on his shoulders even after his death, while he simultaneously tried to juggle his own ambitions and raise his children.
I had picked up the first volume of My Struggle in a Manhattan Barnes and Noble early on in my stay, and I became utterly engrossed in the dry prose, which somehow crackled with energy despite its barebones nature. It was only when browsing the New Yorker on my phone in JFK while waiting for my flight home that I noticed that the writer had made not just one, but three appearances in the city (notably, one with Zadie Smith moderating, which would have been a dream to witness) while I was blissfully unaware.
Refusing to remain dismayed, I ploughed through the other two volumes upon arriving home. Perhaps ploughed is not the right word, for it suggests physical exertion when I was really spellbound by the events of his life that Knausgaard so artfully composed into a palatable — and at times gut-wrenching — narrative.
The first volume concerns itself largely with Knausgaard’s adolescence and his relationship with his father as well as the rest of his immediate family and friends. As much as the book is made emotionally heavy by Knausgaard’s father’s iron-fisted presence, it is also made buoyant by the awkward accounts of attending parties he wasn’t invited to with alcohol that was obtained and hidden from parents at great expense.
Knausgaard has an astounding memory and unlike James Frey, proves himself to be a patron of accuracy rather than fabrication. The works are Proustian in their self-reflexive subject matter, but are much easier to digest than the French writer’s notoriously dense In Search of Lost Time. Knausgaard is unflinching in writing about his own life which has given rise to the detriment of his family members, some of whom who have publicly railed against his inclusion of their private matters in his work.
Even after finishing the third volume this July, not a week has gone by that I haven’t thought of Knausgaard’s intensely personal exposé. In writing a work that confronted the banality and suffering in his own life, Knausgaard opened the floodgates in his own and other generations’ consciousness to reveal similar painful memories.
Despite his frankly expressed distaste for doing press, I’m massively excited to see my luck come full circle and bestow me with the opportunity to see Knausgaard speak at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre on Oct. 25 as part of the annual International Festival of Authors. I’m even more pleased that one of my favourite Torontonian writers, Sheila Heti, will be the one to interview Knausgaard.
The event is free for students, so you have no excuse not to humour your curiosity. Just don’t pick up any of the My Struggle books during this busy time in the school year or you will be forced to shove all other obligations to the side.
By: Nimra Khan
With Halloween just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to dive into a creepy murder-and-revenge story like Horns by Joe Hill. Horns tells the story of Ig, a man who wakes up the night after the one year anniversary of the rape and murder of his girlfriend to find horns poking out of his skull. These horns also have a strange effect on people: whenever he talks to someone, they are forced to spill their deepest, darkest secrets and sins to him. Needless to say, Ig is scared, but soon finds information about who might be the real killer of his girlfriend.
It’s hard to describe how this book made me feel. I loved it, but it was a painful read that made me feel a bit drained. I was thoroughly squeamish with some of the grotesque things that happened in this story, but I was still in a rush to know what happened next. Horns is a book that makes the read uncomfortable, and I loved it.
Much like The Lovely Bones, Horns explores the idea of a psychopathic killer that no one would expect; someone among us that you would overlook because of their kindness. Too often the character in this story made me want to run away and hide, and I often had to reassure myself that he wasn’t real. I silently send up a prayer that no one has to ever meet a person like that, proving just how compelling a read Horns was. With plenty of exploration into the bible, God, and the Devil (surprise, surprise), Horns explores the idea of a “devil” in all of us. It challenges what it means to be good or evil, and makes the reader wonder if we really have a choice in the matter. To quote Ig: “maybe all the schemes of the devil were nothing compared to what man could think up.”
I found out about this book after seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of Horns, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Ig. The movie had its premiere during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, but will be released in theatres for the public on Oct. 31. I’m always one for reading the book before seeing the movie, and after reading Horns I am definitely looking forward to it.
By: Sarah O'Connor
This heart-wrenching novel follows David, a young boy in WWII England who is struggling with his mother’s death and his father’s remarriage. David turns to books to deal with the extreme changes in his life when suddenly the books begin whispering to him in his mother’s voice. As David follows the voice he ends up in the land of fairy-tales, only it is warped and much darker than anything Grimm could have written. As a television show the audience would get a chance to explore the macabre fairy-tale world that seems to “take” children as David searches to save his mother and restore his life to its original state. It would also be nice to see a show that’s set in the fairy-tale world that actually has some darkness to it (here’s looking at you Once Upon a Time).
This popular book series has been made into a film twice, in Sweden the entire series was made into three movies but in North America only the first book made it to the big screen. This popular thriller mystery series featuring the fierce investigator Lisbeth Salander and once-famous journalist Mikael Blomkvist as they solve (and later become accused of) murders and disappearances actually did very well in the box-office, though much better in Sweden where the book series is set than it did in North America. Once again, a television series would have been a fantastic choice for the book series as it would have allowed a more detailed look at the cases Salander and Blomkvist were trying to solve as well as a deeper look into the protagonists (particularly Salander’s) dark pasts. The Millenium series could have been a grittier crime show that slowly got audiences into the darkness of the crimes instead of throwing it in their face as movies do.
A must-read novel for any lovers of magic, The Night Circus focuses on the performers at the mysterious Le Cirque des Rêves which comes without warning and is only open at night. While the novel focuses on many aspects of the circus, including the group of people who made it and how it began, it also includes the story of Celia and Marco. A daughter and son of two rival magicians the two (who are children at the beginning of the novel) are prepared for a duel against one another when they reach adulthood, when they expectantly fall in love. The Night Circus is much more than just a romance and it would be the perfect book to adapt into a television show in order to see the different back stories that led Celia and Marco to the circus and how the circus has affected those who created it.
This popular books series about the three Baudelaire orphans who deal with one tragedy after another had a majority of fans disappointed with the movie adaption in 2004 that combined the first three books into one movie. The main complaints towards the movie stemmed from the fact that the movie was more comic and light- hearted than the dark themes of the book which held more of a dark edge (the books are definitely an acquired taste). Had the books been adapted as a television series, audiences could have had the chance to understand the Baudelaire orphans as individuals rather than as a group. As well there would have been more time to explore the mysterious past of the Baudelaire’s family and their numerous relatives (whom the orphans had never met before the deaths of their parents) which was only briefly hinted at in the movies (what was with that spyglass anyways?).
By: Sarah O'Connor
I’m the type of reader who gets sucked in by what is popular. Perhaps that makes me simple-minded, but that’s the reader I am. I don’t care if a book has gotten rave reviews or been widely reviled, I have to read it and make my own decision on it.
It did take me a while to pick up Gone Girl, though. The book was published and became popular in 2012, which was when I was starting university, so that’s where I’ll lay the blame for my late reading of the novel. It wasn’t actually until the first trailer for the film adaption came out in April 2014 that I became reacquainted with Gone Girl.
After being put on a mile-long waiting list for the book — every sane person wants to read the book before the movie — I finally got it before school started.
It sounds like a typical modern mystery: a husband comes home from work to find his house in disarray and his beautiful wife missing. The man’s hometown starts a search party for his wife, but when the husband starts acting suspicious, the town and readers begin asking if he is really as nice as he seems.
I’m a fan of mystery novels, so the clichéd description had me sighing and wondering if I was reading another dull, predictable book. But Gone Girl surprised me. Not only that, it chilled me.
The book is told in a he-said she-said kind of way; the chapters alternate between Nick, the worried husband who just wants to find his wife, and diary entries from his wife Amy, which reveal dark points in her five-year marriage that make her husband look much more suspicious than he appears.
Both Nick and Amy become unreliable narrators as the readers are exposed to two different accounts of events and people.
The mystery ends in a way that I can only say is unconventional for a novel of its genre, but it worked for me. Reviews are evenly split on Goodreads between those who enjoyed the ending and those who hated it. While I liked it, I definitely understand the hate for it. Debate has heated up once again as it has come to light that the author has rewritten the ending for the movie.
So what does this mean for the novel, for the readers, and for the story as a whole? I can’t say, but I know my mind is swimming with possibilities.
Gone Girl is a psychological roller coaster with so many twists and turns you’ll get whiplash. What begins as a predictable small-town mystery involving a young married couple becomes a dark, tangled web of deceit and second-guessing. You can take in in theatres starting Oct. 3.
When Sarah Olutola isn’t working on her dissertation here at Mac’s English and Cultural Studies graduate program, she can be found on bookshelves across Canada under the pen name Sarah Raughley.
Sarah’s first published book, Feather Bound, is the result of her creative writing efforts done after hours, after being encouraged in some of her English classes.
“Mac gave me encouragement in a roundabout way in that I had this class that we had to share our work and get feedback on it every step of the way. It wasn’t something I was used to as I didn’t usually show my creative writing to others,” said Olutola.
The book, an entry into the young adult fantasy genre, tells the story of a young girl with a secretive past getting swept up into a world of glitz and glamour, but soon finds that same world has disturbing connotations.
“It’s more low-key magical realism which basically means contemporary but with a touch of magic. You know, how sometimes fairy tales are creepier than they let on? It’s like those, but transposed into the modern world.”
Though this is Sarah’s first book published, it is not the first work taht she has tried to get bound and sold. “Just because you may have a debut doesn’t mean it’s the first book you try to get published. There are other works I’ve tried but wasn’t able to. This was an outlier for me, a bit experimental, and that’s how it went.”
She talks of her influences beyond other books, being that she plays a great deal of video games and wants people to take the medium seriously. “I’m sort of a geek and I found when I was a kid I did read, but I played video games more than I read. A lot of people dismiss video games as a way of storytelling. You see a lot of really creative, out-of-the-box storytelling in games.”
To aspiring McMaster authors, she stresses the importance of doing your research and investigating alternative publishing avenues.
“There’s the traditional route, which I did. Getting an agent, writing a manuscript, and e-mailing a query to a bunch of publishers. Nowadays, because of the rise of e-books and e-readers, you don’t really need to go through the traditional route. I’m happy I have an agent and that kind of support, but I’m also open to putting myself out there, for a dollar or two on Kindle,” said Olutola.
“Another big tip would be to read, read, and read a lot in your field, and even outside your field. It helps you build your vocabulary and evolve your writing style.”
She is not ready to put her passion to bed just yet, as she has already taken steps towards another publication. “I just wrote another manuscript, along the lines of big epic fantasies that I like [such as LOTR and ASOIAF] and I am currently sending that to publishers. I’m hoping that becomes my next book. It’s something completely new.”
When asked about the pen name, Olutola responded, “I’m eventually going to have to publish works under my professional name, and I didn’t want to get my academic work mixed up with my fiction writing. Raughley is a nickname for my Nigerian name, just a spelled a little differently.”
Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games… fantasy novels are taking over the world of fiction. Here are a few lesser-known books that are just as out of this world.
Generation Dead
By
Daniel Waters
Generation Dead is not your typical zombie novel. Heartwarming and provocative, it actually makes you fall in love with the undead.
Set in contemporary United States, hordes of American teens have risen from the dead. Luckily they do not have an affinity for human flesh and merely resemble the average teenager. They are termed the “differently biotic” and integrate into normal American life. The novel is driven by a love triangle between goth girl Phoebe, her neighbor Adam and the zombie Tommy. But inevitably many humans view the “differently biotic” as gross and unnatural creatures that must be eradicated, and this causes tension.
Generation Dead is engrossing and forces one to view the zombies’ plight as an issue of discrimination rather than one of a missing heartbeat. The novel’s sequels are just as tantalizing and come with countless twists and turns.
The Darkest Minds
By
Alexandra Bracken
In Alexandra Bracken’s world, a mysterious disease termed IAAN has killed the majority of American children. Those who survived have developed frightening abilities, including telekinesis, electrokinesis and mind control. In order to tame this crisis, the American government has confined all children to “rehabilitation camps”. Similar to concentration camps, these so-called rehabilitation centers have resulted in the abuse and death of thousands of innocents. For the past six years, sixteen year-old Ruby has been locked away at one such camp and has only narrowly survived. She is rescued by a group of terrorists who wish to use her abilities to take down the American government. Ruby, however, escapes this terrorist organization and teams up with three other misfit superpower teens.
The Darkest Minds is filled with nonstop action and though it’s a young adult novel, the book discusses some of the most harrowing aspects of the human condition.
Divergent
By
Veronica Roth
Divergent has often been touted as the new Hunger Games, but in my opinion that’s a gross understatement. Divergent is 10 times more intriguing and thought-provoking. Set in the remnants of destroyed Chicago, society has rebuilt itself to be a more peaceful and efficient entity. People are divided into factions: Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). Each faction remains separate but works together to maintain the prosperity and improvement of human society. At the age of 16, each person must choose what faction they will belong to for the rest of their life. Beatrice Prior finds this task exceedingly difficult because she is different - she is “divergent”.
The perfect combination of dystopia, horror, and love, Divergent is a must-read. Watch for it this year as it makes its silver screen debut.
I Am Number Four By
Pittacus Lore
Though penned by the author of A Million Little Pieces, I Am Number Four deals with entirely different subject matter. The novel and its sequels follow a group of nine teenage aliens from the planet Lorien. Ten years ago their planet was destroyed in a battle against the evil Mogadorians and those who survived fled to Earth to develop their innate powers called legacies and live in secrecy, protected by a charm that only allows them to be killed in a specific order.
This particular novel follows the story of John Smith, otherwise known as “Number Four.” Although the novel is completely based in fantasy, it is shockingly well written and engrossing. With all the series’ twists and turns, you can’t help but want to learn more about John and his companions.
Skip Michael Bay’s terrible movie adaption of I Am Number Four and read the book instead.
By: Tina Cody
when I open a book , be it a classic, a mystery, a sci-fi, or a romance, the world falls away. Everything goes quiet and there’s nothing but the pages before me. I no longer notice the room or the chair - hell, for a while I forget to breathe. All I have is the black print against the yellow page, and the touch of those pages under my fingertips.
The black print lifts off the page and becomes the characters laughing and arguing and growing. I can hear the strike of the clock on the night of the Partition of India and taste the butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks, feel the wrath of Heathcliff, the agony of Anna Karenina and the intensity of a lover’s spat between Elizabeth and Darcy.
As I read on, the physical condition of the books morphs with my habits and routines. I see traces of the coffee stain from when I was reading at My Dog Joe, and smell the scent that the pages readily absorbed from my perfume. In these small ways, books have become an integral part of my identity. They take on characteristics of my life as I weave my own life into the stories.
Of course, time passes, technology advances, and life is perpetually made easier. Progress shall never stay stagnant. So, our cozy books get an upgrade and are replaced overnight by a rigid little device with a battery life.
I received my Kobo Ebook as a gift from a family friend. I was frustrated: I can’t bend its corners or spill things on it. And let’s face it – it is never going to smell like me. I was also a little angry that this little black ‘book’ is supposed to replace the intimacy of print and paper. Like a stubborn centenarian, I refused to accept this change.
As with most technology, the reading device has its flaws, which, combined with my unwillingness to cooperate, made it easier to hate it – at least initially. Reading is not the same with digitized words, on an artificial white screen that my eyes can never fully adjust to. I will forever be annoyed when it refuses to highlight the last lines of every page, or when it malfunctions and become instead a book of illegible codes.
What it all comes down to, though, is convenience. And being one of the laziest people I know, I have - in time - despite its technical quirks, the “please charge me” notices, and its stubborn reluctance to open certain documents, grown unwillingly attached to this piece of technology. A simple tap of the fingers replaces the flip of the page. When I leave the house, I no longer have to debate painfully what I’d like to read on the subway that day. With just one little black ‘book’ I am equipped with a few hundred selections ranging from poetry to historical fictions. I can choose a book from the library without having to get out of my chair.
No one can deny that ebook-readers are convenient. But I can’t help reminisce about the moments we’re missing out on for convenience’s sake. Some of the best, most heartfelt moments of the entire reading experience are the times spent browsing through the BMV bookstore, when the allotted one hour accidentally turns into five.
The truth though, is that the books will always be there – the popularity of ebook-readers will never make bookstores obsolete. At the end of a long day, I can still go back to my easy chair under my comforters, snuggle with the yellowing pages and watch the black print come to life, fulfilling that book-shaped hole that a little black Kobo can never replace
For a story that’s supposed to be based upon an idyllic town, this is one that’s ‘casually vacant’ of the brightness and underlying morals most readers have come to associate with J.K. Rowling. I began Casual Vacancy apprehensively, internally at war with my love of her work and what critics have been saying. I knew it was marketed for the adult demographic – meaning that it is filled with swear words, social issues, and taboo topics. Yet, while reading it, I found certain reminders that it was written by the same author of the beloved Harry Potter series - the multitude of unique names, for one thing. Except Casual Vacancy is only about 500 pages, and not a seven-book series, which meant that I quickly got lost in a crowd of unknowns by the end of the third chapter.
Initially, the characters didn’t stand out to me. There was no marked hero – in fact, it felt that the only character truly branded with any kind of innate goodness was the one she chose to kill off at the beginning. Influenced by my psychology textbook readings, which I was working on at the time, I began to identify every character’s “id” (the Freudian label for the part of our mind that gives in to temptation). I even started diagnosing many of the characters with different disorders. As I got further into the story, I began to draw comparisons from Harry Potter characters – maybe in an effort to form attachments with them. I likened the uptight, morale and respectable Dr. Parminder Jawanda to Professor McGonagall, and Howard Mollison and his wife Shirley and their son Miles were analogous to Vernon, Petunia and Dudley Dursley.
The story begins with Barry Fairbrother dying. As an important member of the town of Pagford’s council, he leaves behind an empty seat, known as a ‘casual vacancy.’ The people of the town, after expressing their condolences (both sincere and otherwise) erupt into a full-on political war. Male members of the community step up in an attempt to fill Fairbrother’s role. The women gather up into a force of their own, supporting and undermining their husbands and families at every turn. But there actually ends up being more emphasis on the youth, rather than the adults. While this teenage gang does not have to face the powerful external forces like Harry and his friends, they must deal with their own personal demons. The novel seems obsessed with issues of sex, masturbation, child abuse, hatred, drugs, self-mutilation and bullying. These teens are determined to prove themselves in a world full of hopelessly traditional adults, yet employ the same methods of brutality they observe in the adults in their lives.
Upon finishing the story, I felt as hopeless as the characters. I pictured Rowling calmly finishing the novel with its ambiguous ending, and imagined that she believed a “happily ever after” is only possible in an imaginary world like Harry’s. Our reality – a concept reinforced by her references to Rhianna’s lyrics and a middle-aged woman’s awkward sexual fantasy involving a band with a creepy similarity to One Direction – is doomed to human cause and effect. We make certain errors that cannot be fixed, and are forced to live with their consequences forever. In the same way, I found the climax of the novel tragic, too predictable, and unable to resolve many of the longstanding problems the people of Pagford had invested so much time in.
And yet…Favourite Quote: “It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?”
Palika Kohli
