Reading Response #1: Lovely, Dark and Deep

lovely, dark and deep

by Amy Mcnamara 

 

     I chose to read this book because the title and cover intrigued me. I thought the photo and the colors on the book were really pretty. You could say I judged this book by its cover. It didn't have a summary anywhere, so I didn't really have a choice. Lovely, Dark, and Deep is about a girl named Wren who moves in with her dad after a tragic accident turns her life upside down. She has a lot of emotional issues and doesn't really have many friends, until one day she is almost hit by a car driven by a boy named Cal Owen. She tries to isolate herself from everyone, but Cal and her parents are doing everything they can to keep her from it. 

      The author uses a lot of sentence fragments that are sometimes distracting while reading. However, it makes it sound like you're listening to the narrator's own thoughts and actions, and makes it a lot easier to paint a picture in your head of what is going on. For example,

"I feel like I might run off the edge of the world. Like I might need to. I trip a few times. Slip on the sweet-smelling wet leaf rot on the forest floor. Down on my torn knee, scraped hands. Snot runs down my face and tears streak hot against my temples. My eyes burn. I run faster, harder. Like I can outpace the dark. When I fall, I get back up again almost between strides. The pain's good. Feels like a solution to something." (page 17)

This is like Wren, trapped inside her own emotions

     Wren, the narrator, is interesting to me because it seems that she's trapped in her own feelings. She doesn't have anyone to talk to, but that's her own fault... But then, it's not really her fault. She can't look at hardly anyone without being pulled back into her past. Cal reaches out to her, but when she looks at him, she only sees reminders of Patrick, her ex-boyfriend who passed away in the accident. It makes me sad for her. 

     She turns to running and reading poetry to clear her mind. She mentions one specific poem that she really appreciates because the author of it "tells it like it is". I looked up the poem because I wanted to see what she was so amazed by.

Excerpt from Aubade by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.   

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   

Till then I see what’s really always there:   

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   

Making all thought impossible but how   

And where and when I shall myself die.   

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. 

     I think that with the exception of getting half-drunk, Wren can connect with this part of the poem because although she isn't dying, death is staring her in the face. She has dealt with death and felt like she was dying inside. I would really hate to be in Wren's place. 

I think I'll really enjoy this book, if I can get past the title, which creeps me out..