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"The light we lost", by Jill Santopolo : Book review

Date of reading : 1st May, 2018

I have procrastinated until this time, and I write this review finally.
A first person narrative is the type I most prefer when I read a novel.
It makes it easy to concentrate on reading and well understand characters, their behaviour, why they did that and above all it makes me feel like as if I were the narrator themselves.

That is the beauty of reading a novel. A good novel gives me to have an opportunitiy to experience lives that I have never experienced before in my real life. On a rare occasion, something similar or the same may happen to life, and this invaluable experience might help me see the situation straight, what is at stake, what is important, why it has happened, and most importantly what I must do.

This book caught me while I was off the guard. I was not expecting much from this book, but it turned out to be one of the most impressive novels. Lucy, the narrator and heroin, feels so real and alive. I was her. I could feel everything Lucy had felt.

I want to finish this review with my favorite quote in this book. A woman filled with light makes everything she touches brighter.

Book Review, "The Course of Love" by Alain de Botton

Purchasing : late 2017
Reading date : Sunday, 1st April, 2018

 The fundamental reason that I read a novel is that there is a hope that I would find at least a single sentence which articualtes what I have felt in my real life before or at the moment and what I could deeply sympathize with. There is a time when emotions are extreme, but it is difficult to understand properly what I am feeling or to say it in right words. Alain de Botton in this book, "The Course of Love", shows us many insightful words that we can readily sympathize with. I could sense, while reading it, that he centainly understands how to love someone properly.

 It tells us how we begin to love someone, how we become frustrated, and how we overcome it. At the beginning of love infatuation captures us. Objective knowledge doesn't come into it. It bypasses the normal processes of reason.

 At the beginning, we are frightened and anxious. When we face someone we are deeply in love with we become clumsy, scared of saying and doing the wrong thing, and cannot find anything to talk about. It is always strange that 'we tend not to get very anxious when seducing people we don't much care about', says Alain de Botton.

He also says 'Love reaches a pitch at those moments when our beloved turns out to understand, more clearly than others have ever been able to, and perhpas even better than we do ourselves, the chaotic, embarrasing and shameful parts of us. We can admit to not being as respectable or as sober, as even-keeled or as 'normal', as society believes. We can be childish, imaginative, wild, hopeful, cynical, fragile, and multiple- all of this our lover can understand and accept us for.'

I cannot agree more with the view that to love someone means to give them the power to hurt us. When love reaches a certain point they are dependant on each partner. Each of them wants to be understood, heard. But, 'our romantic lives are fated to be sad and incomplete, because we are creatures driven by two essetial desires which point powerfully in entirely opposing directions.' When hurt, Alain de Botton encourages us to understand that 'few in this world are very simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism or aggression but, at the rare moments one can manage it, always love.'

Alain de Botton is an observant, acute and clever writer. 'The Course of Love' explores how to maintain love over time as he constantlys says love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm. This doesn't mean that we should be anti-Romantist. It is completely opposite. Love is a skill because it is not so much the start of love as accumulating processes of understanding it.

Book Review : "The Last Letter From Your Lover", by Jojo Moyes

Date of purchase : 2014 or 2015 possibly
Date of reading : 1st reading 2015 possibly, 2nd reading 3rd March 2018

 I finished 'The Last Letter From Your Lover', by Jojo Moyes a second time. It is a special book to me because this was almost the first book that gave me an idea of what love is. Also, it is the first book I read by Jojo Moyes which eventually made me read the rest of her works.

 It is pointless to define love in simple words. Even so, if I should, I believe it is all about caring. When one is in real love who believes she is a soulmate, her safety, convenience, and smile become his only life concern. She becomes the centre of his life and everything he does is for her. She is the reason for his existence.

As mentioned in the book, it is indeed a gift to have someone to love. To love properly, I think one needs to understand what their love must be and have his own idea of love. Loving someone should be a constant effort to understand them properly and correctly. It is all about understanding.

I would like to mention two favorite quotes from The Last Letter From your Lover.

“Somewhere in this world is a man who loves you, who understands how precious and clever and kind you are. A man who has always loved you and, to his detriment, suspects he always will.” 


“To have someone out there who understands you, who desires you, who sees you as a better version of yourself, is the most astonishing gift.” 


Every single person who has loved someone in their life can understand the meaning of these two quotes. These are exactly what we feel towards someone whom we love, but it is excessively difficult to express them in exact words. And Jojo Moyes is one of the few who actually achieved this in this book.