Monday 16 March 2020

This is what I mean.

I  would say the majority of people hate the things I love. Anything that makes you hurt. Makes you feel. Makes you scared or angry or sad. Makes you feel something for someone or something else in time, and that to me, as referenced by my title yesterday, which made perfect sense to me and no one else, is the hallmark of an incredible creation.

This week I finished the third book that made me place it on the table, smooth the cover and then promptly burst into tears.

(The others? Sole Survivor by Dean Koontz (don't knock it til you read it) and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King, a book I recently reacquired and can't wait to reread.)

This third book? The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. I saw it in passing over Christmas and put it on my Must-Read list and Lochlan bought it for me, as he has always tried to foster a love of reading as big as his own in me and not only am I slow on a page but I'm narcoleptic so I sleep more than I read when I pick up a book and stop moving.

I read this sitting up in bed late at night with all the lights on in order to stay focused. He had to sleep somewhere else because I couldn't put it down and then when I finally did I cried so hard. So hard.

I didn't know it was a true story, refusing to read a thing about it until I had read it, proper. I didn't even register the dedication at the outset, on the page right before the story begins and I am crushed. It unfolded more in the acknowledgements, the interview at the end and the aftermath and if not for a curiosity about the author's need to write this I never would have found out.

What a good book. Holy. Give me more of those.