This is the life that I dream of. Quiet and mundane and rhythmic. Poetical. Simple.

Beautiful writing. Unique. Wonderful descriptive.

He points at my single column-shaped cactus standing perfectly still in the heat, pretending not to hear us.
"You have no idea what he's up to," he says.
"Surviving?" I venture.
“That's the least of it,” Hamish says, “how about just being? Existing. That in itself is an entire strategy.

Strange book but I did like it. Interconnected stories that do connect at the end. Many different voices. Some parts were more vivid and graphic than I anticipated. If I knew it had parts about WWII, I would not have read it.

if you do not flee boredom but surrender to it like a
captive, you can hear what Rüdiger Safranski calls the background noise of existence, with all its associated emptiness and fear.

“But, Jesus, since you are the popular choice, I always liked your words and I hope you will forgive what I just said. Forgive who I was. Forgive who I was not. Ok, now, I‘m just gonna keep my mouth shut and die."

From “Oranges”.
Deceptively intense story.

He was troubled to learn that this was how the world worked, and that sometimes when other people give you advice, it is not good advice, because they are thinking about what is practical and not thinking about what is most important from your point of view. How could they know that, your point of view?

So perfectly written.
A book about loss and grief and memory written through the disjointed, hazy, confusion of dissociation. I understood this language.
The FEEL of the writing matches the inner feel of Mara.

#ptsd #grief #dissociation #runaway #disappear

I read The Christmas Pig to my 7yr old. We loved the beginning but got bogged down in the middle. The story got a bit too abstract for her to follow along.