Read: 18th February 2024 – 23rd February 2024
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
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How do you write about an earthquake after the fact? How do you capture the sense of human misery and suffering when the humans are gone and all that is left is the shattered earth, the broken buildings, the crumbling tombstones? How do you cope with the vacuum of that loss, when everything that seemed so solid before has suddenly collapsed in on itself with all the hunger of a black hole? Joan Didion gives it a pretty good go, trying to render tragedy banal, to normalise and compartmentalise it, to give it near parameters and define the black hole. But then it breaks free of the vortex and she’s back at square one, standing amidst the wreckage and the ruins as the winds hurl around her, fiercer every single time.
It’s unfathomable to even contemplate what a loss like that must be like, of over half a lifetime and nearly half a century lived together, but what I learned from this is the power of love to change, to shape, to mould, but also to compromise, to harmonise, to accept and forgive and challenge. Love as a force that persists even after the object of the love is gone, that maybe even becomes stronger after the love is gone to try and fill the shape they have left behind. They’ll take different paths through the park, but they’ll always find each other again before they get to the exit.
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Originally posted on Goodreads on 21st March 2024: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4407219073
Take a Luke 