The Lightness

I must have taken pictures of two dozen different passages. So beautifully written and powerful and visceral and lovely. This one's going on the To Be Re-Read shelf.

I should have DNF'd this at around 100 pages, but I kept hanging in there waiting for some sort of payoff. I told myself, well, at least it's nice to read female characters who are not discussing a man....oh, wait. Nevermind.
Truthfully, I think this would have been a cool short story. Remove the useless scenes: finding someone in a cold bathtub, a van ride with everyone's seat location detailed, annoying factoids, and all of Olivia's dreams- it is boring to hear people recount their dreams in real life and boring to read it in fiction.

I didn't hate it. It just did nothing for me. I commented earlier on that it was like flipping through a glossy fashion magazine; pretty to look at but, ultimately, doesn't have anything to say. But, I am over “coming of age” stories, white teenage protagonists, and “unreliable” narrators. YMMV.

This story would have been so much more interesting had Temple GONE THERE. Imagine if Olivia had burned her abusive mother alive in the closet before she took off for the meditation center! Imagine if the meditation center ended up being a folk horror situation (which I half expected because of all of the descriptions of isolation and the early weird behavior of characters like Magda) a la Midsommer! Imagine if something had actually been accomplished with the whole missing father plot point! Sigh. These ideas are what kept me hanging in there when I could have been reading something else.