Status Updates From The People in the Trees

A bit of a Sheldon Cooper, that Norton! Doesn’t anyone else who read this book agree? Take a look at this quote: “Often I found myself dreaming of parents who were hardworking immigrants, for whom I was the sole hope”…? I find it equally compelling, as I rarely encounter individuals who romanticise hardship, discipline and severity in childhood as formative motivation.

After reading A Little Life, I decided to take a crack at another of her works. This author certainly doesn’t shy away from controversial themes. Although the island, the immortality, the tribe, and the characters are fictional, the novel is loosely inspired by real events, which makes it all the more unsettling.

“To be a scientist is to learn to live one’s life with questions that will never be answered, with the knowledge that one was too early or too late, with the anguish of not having been able to guess at the solution that, once presented, seems so obvious that one can only curse oneself for not seeing what one ought to have, if only one had looked in a slightly different direction.”

“…but I suppose I had thought until that point that there were a few absolutes in the world—that certain behaviors or acts, like murder, were inherently wrong, and others inherently correct. But my time on Ivu’ivu taught me that all ethics or morals are culturally relative.”