Reviews
Too beautiful for words. 4 stars because it wasn’t the ending I’d hoped it to be. A MUST READ FOR ALL!
A special book as it was a gift from a friend
Book #17 Read in 2016 Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick (YA) Nanette is a soccer star but it doesn't make her happy. Talking to her English Teacher about books and reading make her happy. Her English Teacher shares his favorite novel from his teenage years with Nanette and then gets her in contact with the author, who is local. Nanette meets the author and they bond. Then she meets Alex, another teenage fan of the book and they become a couple. But the happiness is short lived and both Nanette and Alex have serious issues to deal with, with varying degrees of success. A raw and real read, I enjoyed it. I received a copy of this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for a honest review.
i don't care about anything else– this book is what made me start reading paperbacks AND IT WILL ALWAYS HAVE A SPECIAL SPACE IN MY HEART <3 i badly want to read 'the bubblegum reaper' tbh
I need time to put my thoughts into words with this one.
And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you’ll no longer be able to identify yourself—you’ll only see everyone else. You’ll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late. - ^THAT QUOTE. THAT QUOOOOTE. *cries* - I am liking Matthew Quick's writing more and more. - This is one of those books you just really need to read whether you feel different, strange, or maybe in the midst of finding yourself - Quick really knows how to pull emotional and psychological punches without sounding overly dramatic - I can see myself in Nanette's shoes (or maybe that was me 5 years ago). How nostalgic. - I need more of Matthew Quick's books.
"There is a price to pay for pushing beyond everyone else's answers, and what I'm finding out is that I'm more than willing to pay it." I completely devoured this book in less than 24 hours. It was breathtaking, thought-provoking, deeply meaningful, and simply beautiful. Nanette is a protagonist that will stay with me for a long time. Her emotional journey was impactful and relatable, especially to those who have felt like they have never fit in anywhere. Matthew Quick has penned a moving and memorable novel that everyone should pick up. From the character development that gracefully arcs over the novel's entirety to the seamless weaving of metaphors and themes, this book is truly an exquisite thing.
this book has all the makings of an indie teen movie for misunderstood art students. an unstable narrator, the recurring motif of charles bukowski, a philosophical theme. it is increasingly ironic that the novel in this novel, the bubblegum reaper, was the catalyst for nanette and alex's rebellion and this physical novel is a catalyst for my existential crisis. a little dramatic, perhaps. but through reading this, through experiencing nanette's extreme high and then extreme low and then the floating numbness of self-imposed disassociation, i have realized a number of things about society and idolization and relationships. i identify with nanette's exhaustion with trying to be someone she thinks she is and i wonder if i will ever stray far enough from the herd that i turn into alex.
I did not like this book very much. In fact, this is my second Matthew Quick book that I really didn’t like, which made me think that perhaps Matthew Quick is just not for me. I don’t know, maybe I’d love Silver Linings Playbook, and maybe his YA stuff just sucks, but I can’t hope on the Quick bandwagon because I find his books so whiny and self-indulgent and the characters so insufferable. It’s obvious that Quick is trying desperately to be JD Salinger, and I like some of Salinger’s work (didn’t really like Catcher in the Rye- Holden annoyed me too much- but loved his short stories, including A Girl I Knew, which is actually one of my favorite short stories of all time). I didn’t hate Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock as much as I hated this book. Seriously, Nanette was awful, her love interest was awful, the only character that was even a little bit bearable was the author himself. Nanette was just one of the most self-centered horrible main characters I’ve ever come across, and the thing that makes her absolutely unbearable to me is that she so clearly thinks she’s above everyone else. She reminded me a bit of Raskolnikov, in that sense, but Raskolnikov has more of a moral backing than she does. Yes, a man who killed two helpless women seemed like a better person than Nanette because he actually started to redeem himself by the end. She was just as horrible at the end as she was in the beginning of the book. And she had a good life- upper middle class parents, extracurriculars, a friend group, a potential best friend, a potential boyfriend and she chose to throw that all away. And don’t even get me started on the love interest. I can only take so much bad poetry and whatever else he had going on and honestly didn’t shed one tear when he died. The subplot about finding the author’s lost love didn’t really interest me, and a lot of the author bits were trying so desperately hard to channel John Green’s author in The Fault in Our Stars (hated that book by the way)- although this author was a better person than Peter van Houten was, still I admit that van Houten was the best character in that book. I also have to give a quick shout out to the cringe-worthy scene where Nanette loses her virginity, since there was way more blood then there probably should have been. But overall, the only things I really liked about this book were as follows: the references to Charles Bukowski, who is one of my favorite poets (even if most of the people reading this book are probably going to write him off as a poet for pretentious teens), the title Every Exquisite Thing, and the Oscar Wilde quote it came from. Other than that, this book was the most pretentious book I read all year and the only book whose characters I couldn’t stand. The only reason why it isn’t one star is because of the Buk, really. Read more like this review on my blog, http://www.bookwormbasics.blogspot.com
Highlights
And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you’ll no longer be able to identify yourself—you’ll only see everyone else. You’ll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late.
But do we really think about it deeply or do we just ultimately do what we’re supposed to do? What our parents want us to do? What society wants us to do?
Don’t you ever feel like you want to quit doing something everyone else makes you feel like you’re supposed to keep doing? Didn’t you ever just simply want to... stop?
You are not doomed to be your parents. You can break the cycle. You can be whoever you want to be. But you will pay a price. Your parents and everyone else will punish you if you choose to be you and not them. That’s the price of your freedom. The cage is unlocked, but everyone is too scared to walk out because they whack you when you try, and they whack you hard. They want you to be scared, too. They want you to stay in the cage. But once you are a few steps beyond the trapdoor, they can’t reach you anymore, so the whacking stops. That’s another secret: They’re too afraid to follow. They adore their own cages.
Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it.