Status Updates From The Particular Sadness of L...

What on God's earth is happening in this book? :O

Cannot put down.

Mmmm. Be still my heart!

I am so hungry reading this :)

This book doesn't make any sense.

The person I think I am most like in my book is the main characters mom. I say this because the mom likes doing hands-on work and I do as well. Therefore, that makes her a right brain thinker. She has a very creative mind.

I've held onto my brothers hand many times before, but holding his hand was like holding a plant, and the disappointment of fingers that didn't grasp back was so acute that at some point I'd opted to take his forearm instead. On an impulse, I grabbed George's hand. Right away: fingers, holding back. The sun. We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wish, right then, that the whole world was a street.

I love books with peculiar names. ;)

if you are looking for a for an intriguing literary landscape to which you might escape from dreary politics-this, a sweet, funny, sad, strange and suspenseful magical realist, coming-of-age tale set in the Fairfax and Los Feliz districts of L.A. By L.A. writer, Aimee Bender.

Almost finished this book and can't recommend it enough. If you're disheartened by politics, want an engaging literary landscape to visit, suggest this one. Is a sad, funny, sweet, modern-day magical-realist coming-of-age tale set in the Fairfax and Los Feliz districts of Los Angeles.

I don´t understand, with a father who can potentially cure sick people, why are his children either a chair or a dishwasher who can´t possibly imagine doing something else with her power.

"And have you ever? Gone in? I said.
Nah, he said."

.- This novel in a nutshell.

Why is the author revealing the potentially superpower of the Ddad... just twenty pages to go... this novel is all over the place... help...

"What a family", her dad says... ok... WHAT ARE WE AS A FAMILY GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!? We are clearly all having our own specific kind of depression...

This is not magical realism, not in the slightest. It is fantasy. Bad fantasy. Bad psychological fantasy drama.

Wait... he DOES find out... and his response is super weird. Honestly! This family is so weird!

So by the story about the guy with the glasses, I guess what Rose really means is that her Dad is detached and he might know or understand the truth of her condition (specially because his Dad had a freaking superpower too)... and he chooses not to. Nothing, I expect, will be done about this conclusion. Bummer.

Amazing how the author solved that George fling with two paragraphs on two different chapters. Amazed amazing.

What´s with the mom and the grandmother? They really resent each other, but I don´t know why, so there goes that idea!

Im finishing and I just realized that maybe we will never know what about the father and his weird detachment! It makes no sense!

I hate books where I have to fill spaces with big Maybes just because the author thinks all these plot (and emotional) holes make the novel more mysterious, more ambiguous, nearer to grasping the indefinite and consistent sadness of life. But no, the holes just make me care less about people I cannot understand, who seem to be in a kind of quiet despair that I can´t fully grasp as entirely necessary or real. Sorry!

Almost ending this book and she is describing restaurants and suddenly she feels more at ease with her power? Us readers can only thinks of possible reasons to that. The honest (in a way, not really) talk with her mother? The disappearance of her brother? Knowing (again, not really well established) where she stands with George?

She won´t live long with that diet.. I see some serious problems of diabetes or anemia on the near future.

*Spoilers* Hay una parte donde la focalización interna cambia y escuchamos la voz del hermano... no dura mucho, no da mucha información y no se repite. Tristemente, esto da como resultado una novela desperdigada y anecdótica que inspira más confusión y frustración que empatía y compresión.

*Spoilers* Convertir poco a poco a su hermano en parte central de la historia desgraciadamente no motiva a la autora a hacerlo más real. Durante toda la historia es un elemento (no creo siquiera un personaje per se, más bien como un leitmotif) misterioso, apático, con un mundo interior vasto pero vacío, que nunca exploramos del todo.

"But I thought I knew all the factories in America"... aunque tengas más de veinte años, no creo que sea posible el haber probado todas las del país, si su fuente es comida chatarra y el supermercado más cercano... pero, okay!

Nunca se menciona la posibilidad de que enfrente su problema con algo más saludable (física y mentalmente)... se me hace muy extraño que durante toda la novela su manera de enfrentar las cosas no cambie... Creo que eso al final la hará más infeliz, o ausente emocionalmente, como su padre.

"Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia"

"The moon slipped down into the frame of the window and reached an arm of pure light through the glass."

I'm going to put this down for a while cause I'm halfway through and not sure I care about what happens...