Heart the Lover - Lily King

When I read this book, I was reminded of 'Is This What You Want?' by Holly Bourne and 'Cat Person' by Kristen Roupenian. An, intelligent, observant, witty woman interacts with men in a way that demonstrates their flaws 'in the large'. It is as I read books like these that once again I'm reminded of the adage I have adopted from Jordan Peterson, that fiction is more powerful than non because it abstracts out a pattern from humanity. And that pattern, not being about any one of us but about a distillation of the human experience, has more power to reflect us back at ourselves than the seeming individual recount of a non-fictional event. I think its what the best journalists are doing. What does this story reflect about humanity? What can I get out of this that will speak to something about the human experience?

In this book, one of the primary motifs is that you don't learn her name until the last sentence of it. Of course she has a name,

I can tell they all like me better once they've changed my name to Jordan. They use it a lot.

There's something so wonderfully profound about this feeling. I don't even really know how to articulate what it is. Its a very subtle form of... is it misogyny? That even the man she likes, Yash, calls her Jordan forever rather than Casey? Or does he call her Casey at some point? Its left, in the text, as powerful as it is, because it implies not.

Then there's Yash himself. He has serious issues in a sense. I think that the person who said that Yash chose to live his life alone was wrong. I think that someone so deeply paralysed with fear at the thought of love can't really choose at all.

Then I guess in this book there's an implicit discussion of love and what love is. There's Sam, Yash and Silas. Sam is just a guy, he's smart but he's kind of lame. Yash is cool and understanding and soft and poetic and brilliant. Silas is just... her husband. There's this weird thing about him where he's shown to be a good dad and husband and partner in that there's never any question about him. He's just a sort of ordinary love.

He's been on a run. He often runs after work. Somehow I'd forgotten this

He also is notably not jealous. He's unconcerned that there might be any rekindling of flame. He's unconcerned not because he doesn't care but because he's a good husband.

What about Casey? I think that Casey reminds me of something very strange. She's thoughtful and smart and just as emotionally withheld as any 23 year old is. She's a bit cool and funny. But she's also weirdly, by her personality, ordinary. Its very interesting to have the person who in many ways reifies a genius fantasy just be the object of her affections. But I don't think that I got as strong a character sense as in 'Is this what you want' with her much more acerbic commentary and funny inner monologue. She also successfully forsook him. In a way that I think is very interesting. Are men more likely to try to rekindle old loves?

I have not been called Jordan by anyone but Yash in twenty-eight years."

I find this name thing as a motif the most interesting of all motifs in this book. It just sparks something so real. This distance from her real self. This fantasy that is their relationship now. In the end Yash wants to accuse her, wants to blame her, which I find extremely churlish. Extremely. Just utterly and ridiculously extremely. She tried to call so many times, he literally abandoned her. I understand this desire to rekindle something, but I don't really get acrimonious recriminations.

I think for me I have been the men in this book. The ones who are not great. I think I know what its like to be them, to feel like them. I have not been Casey, but its always strangely healing to read books like these and learn about the women in my previous ages and what they might have been going through.

Casey has a monologue where she says that love is hope. Her interviewer I think takes the place of the men who were scared before.

iLove is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.

'True. It's all those things,' I said. 'But where would we be if we didn't feel it? I think its the only form of hope we have. For our survival, I mean. What good is any other virtue without love?'

I think I agree with her sociologically. Humans are social creatures. There is no higher emotional plane I think than the relations that we have with others. Love does not have to be eros or anything to me. It is the many forms of love that we refer to. The full extent of it. We need it because it buoys us.

A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you're reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule... When I think of reading Independent People, I remember the summer air coming through our windows and the quilt we had on our bed and my boys, so little then. And I remember Silas, my husband, reading it right after I did and we started calling each other Bjartur.

I thought that she would say something that agreed more directly with Jordan Peterson. But to be honest I am unsure about that aspect of book reading, maybe its a pity that I use a kindle then, the actual book itself would otherwise be a time capsule through its smell and size and physical features, all information to be encoded into memory and to draw us back to the past. Something that I hadn't thought about before.

In a way it makes me think about my bookshelf. I could, after I read a book through a kindle, buy the book, so its on the bookshelf and I can talk about it, but its... inauthentic actually. Its a memento that means nothing to my brain. My brain can't pick it up and flip through it in a familiar fashion. Kindles are convenient, but once again I am reminded of what we lose for convenience.