Book: TURTLE DIARY
Author: RUSSELL HOBAN (Introduction by Ed Park)
Reviewer’s Instagram: thewrittenroute
Photo Credit: thewrittenroute
Original Book Review
‘I’d always assumed that I was the central character in my own story, but now it occurred to me that I might in fact be only a minor character in someone else’s.’
How easily loneliness will sneak up on you. One minute you’re married with children, the next you’re divorced and renting a small apartment, mucking out someone else’s hair from the communal bathroom drain. Or one day you’re a successful children’s author, kept company by your never-ending ideas and your beloved characters, the next you’re purchasing a fish tank for your pet beetle and wondering if you’ll ever write again. Loneliness in middle age can be so tricky as to be almost despairing.
But also, you might have an idea, an idea that seems like the kind of thing that no one else in the world could dream of — that you are alone, too, in this mission you’ve made for yourself — but then maybe, someone else has thought of it too, their thoughts have been running parallel to yours this entire time and now, somehow, there’s been a slight veer and then: convergence. And then two lonely people are lonely together.
It’s about the possibility of connection and of being met where you are, of an acknowledgment of the space you hold in the world. It’s about how the biggest moments may come from somewhere very small, and how what you expect to be momentous may have little to no impact at all.
It is deceptively simple yet I felt this book deep in my bones; Hoban sees your loneliness — he certainly saw mine — and he invites you in. Honestly, it took my breath away. It’s a book I expect to turn to again and again, each time discovering something new, while also always finding deep respite within.
And a very special thanks to Maria @fistymorests and Kate @katesshelves for making me feel like I needed this book in my life; I absolutely did.
You do, too. Highly recommend.
Book number nine for #NYRBSummer.
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