The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender in The Under-Hyped Readathon!

Aug 14, 2014 Sofia rated it really liked it

It was good but at some points pretty confusing.

I enjoyed it but still, it was pretty weird. This is going to be quite short since I still don't know what I think of this book. It's nice but I expected more from it. I think I feel that way because I haven't even read the Goodreads description. The only thing I heard was from booktubers and that was this: "A human girl was born with wings." I think I expected something like her teenage life while she goes through problems at school, people who w ...more

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Jun 29, 2015 Léa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, 2015, i-should-reread, summer-2023-may-read

Wow. This book. Everything about it was perfect.
I’m just gonna list everything I loved.
- The writing was wonderful and out of this world in such a refreshing way;
- All the characters were so different and exceptional and I got so attached to all of them in just 300 pages, and I actually felt like a mother to Emilienne and Ava (yes, I’m weird);
- The magical realism was done so well, and although sometimes I was a bit confused at some parts(view spoiler) ...more

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Sep 11, 2014 Skye rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gotta-buy

I'm in love with this book. I just finished and I want to reread it right now!!

Such a wonderful commentary on how perceptions of love can be changed in many different ways. From unrequited love, to familial love, to obsessive love, and everything in between.

The writing was beautiful and poetic and the story was filled with characters that while being flawed I was still routing for.

Only small critique is that I wish the novel could have had more focus on the importance of friendship love as well ...more

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Mar 23, 2022 Ciarra rated it really liked it

Shelves: atmospheric, beautiful, emotional, lyrical

Leslye Walton's writing is not only beautiful and lyrical, but also veils layers that take you deeper into the minds and hearts of the characters and their stories. The more I pondered on the words, the more I really felt the emotions beneath them. The book has very little dialogue, which I actually enjoyed. It read as a memory - filled not with words and conversations, but mostly with smells, snippets of clarity, snippets of vagueness, sensations, emotions.

Personally, I didn't find Walton's de Leslye Walton's writing is not only beautiful and lyrical, but also veils layers that take you deeper into the minds and hearts of the characters and their stories. The more I pondered on the words, the more I really felt the emotions beneath them. The book has very little dialogue, which I actually enjoyed. It read as a memory - filled not with words and conversations, but mostly with smells, snippets of clarity, snippets of vagueness, sensations, emotions.

Personally, I didn't find Walton's descriptions to be flowery for the sake of being fancy, I found them appropriately vivid to draw me into our narrator's misty eyes of nostalgia. Also, bearing in mind that this book deals with various harrowing tragedies, I think the magical realism truly added to the emotional current of the story - rather than being ridiculous, the unexplained 'magical' elements actually enabled Walton to express the haunting and pervasive effects of every life-altering event; how sorrow seeps into the every day, how painful things can be overwhelmed by fury, how hope can make things simultaneously more bearable and more unbearable ...

I began reading this book with little idea of what to expect, and I think it should be enjoyed like that.

My thoughts on the ending ...

(view spoiler)[ I interpreted it as metaphorical, but more depicting how she let go of her wounds and pain (hence the unravelling bandages) and allowed herself to love and move forward, free from all the painful experiences. I think Ava's speckled wings that weren't able to take flight represented a culmination of love and happiness supressed because both her mother and grandmother did not allow themselves to freely love after their heartbreaks, instead latching on to sorrow and accepting it. It grounded them (in both senses of the word) and limited them.

At the end of the book, we see that all three women finally come to terms with their pain and let go; Emilienne in her death saw her brothers and sisters as their beautiful selves again, rather than remembering them as disfigured ghosts. She saw her brother as himself, both in her dreams and as she woke up and died, speaking not of their tragic ends but dwelling on the happiness and love they always had in each other in the Manhatine house. Viviane, too, had finally ceased to mourn the past and what-could-have-been with Jack; finally turning away from the person who chose to vie for his father's affection even after his death (hence, why when she laughed and laughed in the car she said that she realised Jack had not changed but he'd always been the same - as in, the same boy who back in their childhood wanted more than anything for his father to approve of him), and instead embracing the love that chose her in Gabe (when Viviane looked at Gabe's hands in the hospital and saw his love line, she realised he was willing to love her at any cost, Jack wasn't willing to pay that cost).

When Ava saw Rowe and then Fatima Ines' birds in the attic - doves that had mated with crows - I believe she saw that the innocence and purity of love (represented by the doves) did not have to become ruined or monstrous when mixed with darkness and sorrow, perhaps as Nathaniel Sorrows was or had become because of his infatuation, or Fatima Ines who was so broken by her sadness that she grew mad (represented by the crows).

We know that Ava always identified with birds as well as humans; in humans she saw how love can lead to lasting brokenness, but in the birds she saw that love, even with all the sorrows, can become stronger, resilient, perservering. And I think that's what she also chose for herself. (hide spoiler)] ...more

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