14/11/22
I won't forget reading this book.
I did so in probably the best time possible - in late September, when nostalgic ghosts roamed the world unleashed, when baristas started sprinkling my cappuccinos with cinnamon and when I took my coat from the wardrobe for the first time since the winter. I will say it a hundred times, but for me the reading experience is as important as the book itself and I loved this one: late autumn nights, tired eyes in four in the morning, midnight dinners of croissants and grapes (I did not tried to be pretentious, it just naturally came). I would always put a pencil behind my ear, ready to underline the hell out of it, listen to a quiet classical music in the background and occasionally write snippets of some thoughts on my notes. It made me think all the time, write more again and I adored the book for it. That whole period of reading it had a very specific atmosphere and activities linked to it that will always be tied together in my mind and memories. And I will miss it.
Same as I will miss the atmosphere of the book itself, its morally corrupt characters, Hampden, the country house and just… spending time there and with them all. Even though they are a bunch of… well, a bunch. To say it has a way of “gripping you” doesn't seem completely right, because that can be said about any book and this one wasn't gripping exactly, it had a very specific process of… what. Enchanting me? Possessing me? Hypnotizing? Fascinating? Entrancing? I honestly don't know but there's a possibility that the same will happen to you and you will live there. You will walk that campus, eat those sunday dinners, feel sick in your stomach from either alcohol or some their deeds, see the characters alive and vivid though Richards idealised eyes and when it's done and gone, you will have trouble getting over it, you will miss it and you will want it back no matter how bad some of it was. It will be like a life that you lived and then lost.
The book is not perfect and it's definitely slow - very slow. At least at two points in the book I've asked myself “and what will they do for the rest of it?”. But there's always something and sometimes it's not much per se, but it's enough for them and for their everyday life that you are a part of, watching it - slowly - fall apart, very fascinated by it and very curious and it just keeps you reading. And don't take me wrong, I don't mind slow at all, I bathe in slow, it's my nourishment, so that was all good with me, but it may catch some people off guard if they're expecting something else. And now that we're at “expecting'': this book has been on my TBR for a decade. When you add all the fuss around it I can tell you, if I ever had EXPECTATIONS (yes, very big ones) it was now. And I have to say, it was not what I expected, but somehow… it was exactly it. It's strange and hard to explain. So I'll leave it very unhelpfully at that. Also the blurb is a bit deceiving, at least for me, because the first line - “under the influence of their charismatic classics professor” - made me expect him to be much more present and influential then he was and that may have disappointed me a little. I wanted more deep talk, more teaching, more… everything. I'm still not sure if the book deserves a five star rating, but the experience of reading it does (for me).
Honestly, I have trouble describing the book and keeping my thoughts comprehensible and collected and I don't want to anymore, so I will just give you random snippets of my impressions. Hopefully you'll make something out of them:
you can't rush this book, it feels like poetry in a way - it's to be read at your own pace, often slowly, sometimes in fragments and you have to feel it, otherwise it may not be a great experience / the characters are terrible but also charming but also terrible and you want to befriend them but also stay as far away from them as possible and maybe even kill them sometimes or at least give them a good punch and maybe one kiss/ some quotes are so good i want to die / it will show you the charming beauty of beauty and then, very slowly and horrifyingly, show you how not-beautiful it is to love beauty for beauty itself, because beauty is often not what's hiding under it… you understand?/ it had such a strange effect of giving me what i always wanted - to have my elitist group of friends, have profound talks about mythology and human nature and classics, sprinkle a little bit of moral corruption there and a nice campus life and enough money to live freely and decadently - and then make me not want that at all. or maybe want it still, but in a more… right way. it… ah, how to explain? (i can delete this when i find the right words but to assert my confused dominance, i won't). it will not show you what you should do and how the power of friendship conquers all and how murder is a no no and love so straightforward. instead it will give you this beautiful thing of everything twisted and by that show you that this is not what you would really want. even if you think it is, it's not, they are wrong, it's wrong and there is only pain and guilt and nothing good waiting when you live like that and maybe you would rather not. it will seemingly do everything to make that corruption beautiful only to highlight by doing so how not-beautiful it is in its core. well, those are not the right words exactly, but they are words and have to do/ it's been two months and i still occasionally think about the book. it has impressions that will last, but as i've said, what is truly everlasting for me is the experience of reading it.
It's not a book to devour.
It's a book to savour.
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