Bethany > Recent Status Updates

Well. That took me forever to get through, but it was 100% worth all the patience I needed to keep going. It was a mystery, but it was also a story about how lives intersect and the secrets that people keep buried and how people love and how people hate… it was all of the things and it was beautifully written.

3.5-3.75ish stars

Sharing a quote from the book: “Anything you do. Borrowing money from a bank, commissioning a piece of work, sending or receiving a parcel, making a plan with friends, ordering food at a restaurant… all those things can only happen because of mutual trust on both sides.” ❤️

I’m in the middle of this and I love how she’s using relationships with the natural world to magnify how essentially everything that exists needs everything else that exists. It’s a great metaphor for how we need to live together as humans too.

“For a girl, the fear of not being pretty is the fear of not being a valuable object, which is the fear of not being loved. It is a conflation that is instilled so early on and runs so deep that, even when you know it’s a fear perpetrated by patriarchy, goaded by fashion magazines, and used to manipulate you into buying stuff, you still can’t stop the way it affects you.”

“The thought came to me then that who we are to one another isn’t so easy to categorize after all: that fathers can be sons, and lovers friends, and daughters mothers, and that such words as these tell only half the story, maybe not even half.”

“Many times, she tried to will herself into the faith, hoping that it could offer her some comfort and direction--that it might fill the hollowness she feels. But despite her best efforts, this has failed to happen. It's Pappi's paintings she believes in, the sensation they arouse of a deeper dimension to life.”

Referring to her friend’s birthing experience: “I’m in awe of anyone who’s ever done this, frankly; everyone who has should get a million dollars and also an opportunity to punch someone they don’t like in the face.” 😂 💯