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book review: tearjerker
Jun. 17th, 2012 07:11 pmI like crying art. Life-affirming crying, like the first ten minutes of Up. Grief seems closer to acceptance than panic/denial does, which is where I usually get when I try to confront mortality on my own. Some people like horror, which I don't, I don't enjoy feeling scared and disgusted; I like tragedy and sentiment and love and bravery and it's a good thing I don't mind crying because my god am I a crier. Especially since having kids, but even before. I get teary over particularly soppy commercials.
John Green's The Fault In Our Stars is the new front-runner for "book that made me cry the most". I mean, I was in tears by page 25. I cried so much my eyes hurt. At one point I had to sob less loudly because it was waking up Q. This is a book about a sixteen-year-old girl with terminal cancer worrying about how her parents will cope with her death (and also falling in love), so, right in my kids-and-parents reliable-tearjerking thematic area (and her name is my daughter's middle name, for bonus points). I suppose teenaged readers probably identify with the main character but I very much identified with the mom, and, man.
I should also say that it was laugh-out-loud funny in spots and is gorgeously written throughout, I mean, it was individual and specific in the way that good literature is and Lurlene McDaniel generic cancer porn isn't. Highly recommended if you like crying books. (Stay the heck away if you do not.)
(I also recently read a fanfic story that inspired me to new intensities of crying. I've cried over fanfic before (the "John dies" genre of SGA fic was always good for that, My Father Before Me or Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left To Lose or the end of The Body Holographic, off the top of my head) but this was interesting in that it was the first time I felt like I was really overreacting to something in a story. I mean, I'm sure some people would say that any crying over fanfic is an overreaction, but, see above, I'm a crier, so, no, heroic self-sacrifice, grave visits, totally legit crying. Or the latest chapter of Troika, I read a month after giving birth to my son, so there was that extra personal resonance. But it was still clearly supposed to be heartbreaking, just as Rodney missing John is one of the main emotional notes in those SGA stories. Whereas the story I just read, Du Bist Die Ruh, is arguably not "about" the upsetting thing at all, it's just a plot point that helps us get from A to B (predefined, the story being a "bridging story" in a longer series of pre-existing stories), but as it turns out kids in danger, even if they end up okay, is kind of an insta-override for my interest in a slash pairing (and kids in danger where a two-ish-year-old big sister is scared but trying to save her baby brother because they've been abandoned by their mother is like the DEFCON 1 of heart-rending for me). It was hard because we didn't really get "closure" for that part of the story, the story stayed focused on the main couple, and I was just like BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MOM AND KIDS for the rest of it.)
John Green's The Fault In Our Stars is the new front-runner for "book that made me cry the most". I mean, I was in tears by page 25. I cried so much my eyes hurt. At one point I had to sob less loudly because it was waking up Q. This is a book about a sixteen-year-old girl with terminal cancer worrying about how her parents will cope with her death (and also falling in love), so, right in my kids-and-parents reliable-tearjerking thematic area (and her name is my daughter's middle name, for bonus points). I suppose teenaged readers probably identify with the main character but I very much identified with the mom, and, man.
I should also say that it was laugh-out-loud funny in spots and is gorgeously written throughout, I mean, it was individual and specific in the way that good literature is and Lurlene McDaniel generic cancer porn isn't. Highly recommended if you like crying books. (Stay the heck away if you do not.)
(I also recently read a fanfic story that inspired me to new intensities of crying. I've cried over fanfic before (the "John dies" genre of SGA fic was always good for that, My Father Before Me or Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left To Lose or the end of The Body Holographic, off the top of my head) but this was interesting in that it was the first time I felt like I was really overreacting to something in a story. I mean, I'm sure some people would say that any crying over fanfic is an overreaction, but, see above, I'm a crier, so, no, heroic self-sacrifice, grave visits, totally legit crying. Or the latest chapter of Troika, I read a month after giving birth to my son, so there was that extra personal resonance. But it was still clearly supposed to be heartbreaking, just as Rodney missing John is one of the main emotional notes in those SGA stories. Whereas the story I just read, Du Bist Die Ruh, is arguably not "about" the upsetting thing at all, it's just a plot point that helps us get from A to B (predefined, the story being a "bridging story" in a longer series of pre-existing stories), but as it turns out kids in danger, even if they end up okay, is kind of an insta-override for my interest in a slash pairing (and kids in danger where a two-ish-year-old big sister is scared but trying to save her baby brother because they've been abandoned by their mother is like the DEFCON 1 of heart-rending for me). It was hard because we didn't really get "closure" for that part of the story, the story stayed focused on the main couple, and I was just like BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MOM AND KIDS for the rest of it.)
