Every Exquisite Thing
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Average rating3.3
From the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook comes a heartfelt and rebellious novel in the vein of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Nanette O'Hare is an unassuming teen who has played the role of dutiful daughter, hardworking student, and star athlete for as long as she can remember. But when a beloved teacher gives her his worn copy of The Bubblegum Reaper— a mysterious, out-of-print cult classic— the rebel within Nanette awakens. As she befriends the reclusive author, falls in love with a young but troubled poet, and attempts to insert her true self into the world with wild abandon, Nanette learns the hard way that rebellion sometimes comes at a high price. A celebration of the self and the formidable power of story, Every Exquisite Thing is Matthew Quick at his finest.
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And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you'll no longer be able to identify yourself—you'll only see everyone else. You'll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late.
When you look at the mirror, do you see yourself or pieces of everybody else? Rereading this at the point in my life where I chose what I want for myself instead of conforming to what others are doing was really meaningful. I love this book more than ever
How many times have I had someone's first novel wow me only to find that the second novel was simply ho-hum? I don't know, but it has happened many, many times.
That's what happened here. Silver Linings was very good; Exquisite Thing was disappointing.
I have lots of reasons why. Let's see if I can list some of them. (Warning: There are a few small spoilers coming up.) The plot in which a fan finds an author reminded me of the plot of Fault in Our Stars. (Honestly, even the author in Exquisite was a bit like the author in Fault.) The main character's parents are all over the place, together, apart, not listening to their daughter, and even listening too much to their daughter; they did not seem consistent. The relationship between the main character and her pseudo-boyfriend was tepid. And I loathed the way the main character, at the urging of her therapist, began to talk about herself in third person.
That's probably enough for you to decide for yourself if this is a book you want to spend a couple of hours with or not. I say you could better spend the time watching another banal sitcom and I don't watch tv.
