PEDAL TO THE METAL LOUD HORROR!
It's that time of the year again. Aside: what does Poor Things mean to me?
Years ago, I was but a scrawny teenager of sixteen looking for books to read on Wattpad, you know, the land of highbrow literature freebies. Sick of the fanfics, the teen pics, and outrageous typos, I found that cover. This cover. Slick with blood and hands on it. Daniel Barnett was publishing his works there for exposure — thank God. It was my saving grace. If not for him, I wouldn't be the reader I am. So guess which inarticulate fool flooded his book notifications with all-capital comments going on and on and on about how big of a hole it left? Who constantly messaged him? Dogged his announcements, stalked his reading lists? Tacked down influences? Even e-mailed him again when he left the site to tell him a poor, poor thing is stuck in his world? I blame him. I do. I didn't know books had that magic until then. From there on, I developed this strange eclectic itch to find the next unusual thing. The novel junkie in me was wide awake, an insomniac now frankly, Poor Things as a sleep totem. I failed constantly and made peace with revisiting a random chapter on a bad day. A good day. A good bad day. I annoyed strangers and friends to read it. Everybody I know who reads knows his name by now.
I couldn't stop, okay? It was, like, my Moby Dick or something. I could recite passages at will.
"Adolescence is an earthquake, one that feels like it will never end while you're living it, and eventually there comes a choice. You can crawl under your desk and hide, or you can stand up on top of that shaking desk and dance.”
Teenage is a weird phase. Hormones are acting up. You're mostly bored or tired, pretending to be both, tussling with pent-up everything. And here it is pinioned in all the shame and sentimentality, bow-tied with catharsis that is Barnett's writing.
And the writing, gosh, I have not the energy in me to gush anymore. Joel's narrative voice did me in. It is so consistent, so deliberate. A juggling act of subverted tropes, casually submerged similes, lilting rhythm, recurring details tying into a sighing and screaming examination of themes such as loss, grief, letting go. Barnett makes it seem easy and natural, it rolls off him like a shrug. The fractured storytelling pre-finale and the final chapter may leave some in a daze. For me, it's coherent, inspiring and a cherry on top of a fully realised style.
"Sometimes a person can have a lot of good things but not the right thing, or at least not enough of it. Sometimes passion is like falling in love alone."
The characters totalled into my personal boundaries, made a home in the wreck. Felt like I know them from another life. They're real, all right, flawed, big-hearted, loud, swearing blue into the night, my people, aided by angst and deafening metal notes and, my favourite inanimate thing ever, Bitchmaster. Ash and Nip, please, never ever change. Billy, I'm angry but not at you. I love you, aunt Sandy.
Even the town of Honaw, with its permeating indifference and buried secrets, is a looming character in its own right. I catch myself wondering what became of it after the events were done and dusted, wanting to wander its streets. Cue the quote.
"I think we all have that place where we feel closest to ourselves, where the mind slides into perfect orbit around the heart."
This is mine.
Yeah, yeah, again this is an attempt to get over this book, write off a debt, a soggy love-note to an abandoned wheelchair, me talking to a blaring radio so move along. If you do decide to visit and stay, I hope you don't mind the fog.