Tiffanie Debartolo

Joe Harper has backpedaled throughout his life. A once-promising guitar prodigy, he's been living without direction since abandoning his musical dreams. Now into his thirties, having retreated from every opportunity he's had to level up, he has lost his family, his best friend, and his own self-respect.

Sorrow

Caitlin

I’ve been such a huge fan of Tiffanie’s for years. Her stories spoke to my soul, especially my young adult tortured soul who loved nothing like music and wanted nothing more than to write for Rolling Stone magazine. My dreams might have changed a little, but my love for her work has not. Sorrow is such a powerful story of how to exist with loneliness and self loathing, and how powerful the love around you really is if only you’d accept it. This felt like a nice little inspiration to end the year on — take chances, be brave, and learn to accept love rather than run from it. Thank you, Tiffanie, for always making me want to go out and live and create, too.

Amy Buckle

For fans of: A Little Life, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Tin Man, and The Keeper of Lost Things

Sorrow centres on Joe Harper, a bit of a lost soul whose heart lies in music but who’s found himself wandering from it. Joe finds himself working for performance artist October, and while he doesn’t know much about art, he’s happy to be somewhere creative and for the free lodgings too. As he spends more time with October, he begins to understand more of what she does, and more importantly, why she does it. But as his fascination grows he will be confronted by his past and the decisions he made throughout his life leading up to this point. He wants to find the courage to live the life he’s always dreamt of, but has he lost too much to find it, and is it already too late?

As a protagonist, Joe is very unsure of himself and I think DeBartolo does a fantastic job of showing the reader his insecurities while also proving why he shouldn’t let them hold him back. His estranged friend Cal is used as a great oxymoronic companion between their personalities and while Joe is an endearing person, he also lacks the courage Cal has always possessed, a courage few people probably ever find. More than the one between Joe and October, Joe and Cal’s relationship was actually my favourite part of this novel as it showed the almost unbreakable bond between friends, a bond often more powerful and strong than one between family.

I’m not sure I’ve ever come across such a forgiving character as Cal. Almost to a fault, Cal is willing to forgive Joe’s history and mistakes; perhaps because of Cal’s success, they are easy to look past, but throughout the book you really get the sense that there is an invisible connection between Cal and Joe holding them together, one made before they had grown into men and one which, though weathered, will see them through anything. Joe grows as a person when he meets October, and she helps him find the lost part of himself, but Cal was there from the beginning and that, despite their futures, cannot be replaced.

There was a real poetry in DeBartolo’s writing, one which allowed the characters to appear fully formed in my mind, but the images of redwood trees throughout this book made its beauty stand out too. Joe is obsessed by them and every time he talks about them his passion is infectious and makes the reader want to see them and learn more about them too. Moments like that, I felt, thrust this book into a realistic setting by giving the reader something they could look up and potentially fall in love with as much as the protagonist.

Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is my favourite book for its ability to show love in all its forms, and Sorrow does exactly that too. Books which show the pain of the human condition resonate with me more than any other kind, and this is a great example of one. The characters are flawed, their actions are imperfect and sometimes pitiful, and yet there’s beauty in all of them, and the love they have for each other seeps through the pages of this book more than any of the pain they experience. If that’s not quite convinced you to read it, then I’ll leave you with this quote instead: “I think love is the ultimate art project. To me, there’s nothing more beautiful, more powerful, or more meaningful than truly and purely loving another human. No expectations. No strings attached. Juts the freedom to be who you are and to be loved in spite of that.”

[Thank you to Tiffanie Debartolo for sending me a copy of this book.]

Sorrow

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