very simple

Sometimes, when you’re reading a really good book, a little bell goes off in your head that says, hey, maybe you should have waited until you got home to finish this. But no. There you are, sitting on the bus on your way home from work, surrounded by a bunch of other commuters, and all you’re really thinking is…maybe if I turn and stare out the window, no one will notice the tears streaming down my face.

Warning – there’s no way to review this book without spoiling a few things. I’ll try to be good, but I can’t say that I’ll keep everything a secret. The day before I left New York two weeks ago, a friend and I made a quick pit stop at the Barnes & Noble. I certainly needed to restock a bit after traipsing through those first 13 books discussed below. So, we were browsing, and she said that I should really read this book. So I threw it on the pile (I ended up buying, like, seven books that day). In some ways I was disappointed, but only because I had become so invested in Kath and Tommy that I wanted them to run away together. I wanted them to be even less resigned to their fate. Sure, they had pushed the boundaries pretty far, but I wondered why they weren’t capable of taking that little last step of climbing into Kath’s car and just…driving away. It broke my heart a little bit. The book also does gloss over some of the (pretty major) moral implications of the underlying plotline, but for these characters, in this world, I suppose the situation is a given – not something hidden, or illegal, or necessarily needing to be exposed (although there are clearly at least some people, even within this world, who find the situation…uncomfortable). I suppose that now I have to go read Remains of the Day.

Tags: books