music, books, love and kindness

 

I really, really like The Girl You Left Behind, more for the writing and insights than the actual plot or characters. And how JoJo Moyes respectfully handles the subject of grief (she so gets that there shouldn't be a time stamp on when we stop hurting) is just beautiful at times.

 

There are many times when Liv (one of two main characters the novel focuses on) is engulfed in her grief. When she goes to a gay bar (not wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be hit on either) she drinks (or tries to) herself into oblivion:

 

 Now she is trying to climb back onto her bar stool. She makes two attempts, the second sending her stumbling backward clumsily. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and peers at the bar as if it’s the summit of Everest. She propels herself…

 

Not too long after, she tries to explain to Paul, a man she has just met, that she and her husband really did have something special:

 

We didn’t really fight. Not about toothpaste or farting or anything. We just liked each other. We really liked each other. We were . . . happy.” She is biting back tears and turns her head toward the window, forcing them away. She will not cry tonight. She will not.

 

Her daily "coping strategy" is way too familiar to anyway who has ever tried to forget:

 

She had begun running after she had realized that she could use the world outside, the noise in her earphones, her own motion, as a kind of deflector. Now it has become habit, an insurance policy. I do not have to think. I do not have to think. I do not have to think.

 

One of my favorite passages, though, comes from the first half of the book, where another woman (living in 1916) is also missing her husband (a prisoner of war) terribly. She remembers their first impressions of each other, thinking he reminded her of "a cross between a Roman emperor and a Russian bear." He, in turn, told her:

 

"The first time I saw you I watched you standing in the middle of that bustling store and I thought you were the most self-contained woman I had ever seen. You looked as if the world could explode into fragments around you and there you would be, your chin lifted, gazing out at it imperiously from under that magnificent hair…"

 

There is so much genuine love in both women's stories, whose lives intertwine through a portrait, the same title as that of the book.

 

This is the first Jojo Moyes book I've ever read. I think what surprises me most about The Girl You Left Behind is how natural the read feels, even when there are elements that could seem contrived or gimmicky (like Mo, the snarky sidekick hiding a big heart behind her Goth appearance or the emotional plot twists that make you cry despite your determination not to.)

Never once did I feel manipulated by the author or roll my eyes at the sweetness of both love stories...with a less skilled writer, this could have easily happened. As far as I can tell, there are no plans to film this in the immediate future. Maybe that's for the best...this is the kind of novel you want to play out on your own mind's screen.

 

 

 (There is also an underlying sense of humor within that keeps everything from getting too morose.)