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Paper Butterflies |
This book made me cry. For real. Actual
tears people, actual tears. I read it on holiday, alone in my hotel room after
a day skiing. Or rather, I started it on the plane and then finished it in my
hotel room and I had to text my friend and tell him I needed rescuing because
I had a massive sad. When he rang me to ask what on earth I was talking about I
burst into tears, which, well way to go Jo, way to go.
‘What’s it about,’
he asked me when he came to save me and take me for vin chaud, and then ‘Jesus
Christ’ when I told him.
‘What happens in the
end?’
I don’t know,’ I
told him, ‘I’ve got a few percent left to go.’
Then a pause….’is it
not a true story?’
‘No.’
And then he laughed,
because (and this is not the first time this has happened) it's apparently hilarious
that I can get so emotionally attached to things and people that aren’t even real, except of course they
totally are real in my head and I kind of feel like it’s a testament to how
good a book is, if it can move me like that.
& I mean sure I
was feeling a little bit emotionally fragile before I started this book and
that might have possibly been a contributing factor to the mess I was when I finished
it but fuck, I was not ok. It got under my head – which was totally a typo but
which I am leaving because it made me eyeroll at myself and is clearly a combination
of under my skin and inside my head and as it did both those things I feel like
that’s ok. Anyhow, it got to me and that makes it really hard to review and made
it really hard to rate because did I like it? Nope. No, I didn’t. Do I think it’s
really freaking good? Yes, damn straight I do. & you know, read it (not
you Helen, not ever you Jesus Christ you’ll be like Alice swimming in her own
tears) but wait please until you are the most emotionally stable you’ve ever
been.
This book – which is
about a teenage girl called June who is suffering this awful abuse from her stepmother
and who is trapped and suffocating and is so lost and so desperate that it crushes
your chest almost to read it, who meets this boy, Blister, and gets a taste of
what life should be like – it scared me.
It scared me because
somehow when I was reading it I was June
and that shows incredible skill as a writer but it’s a skill I kind of wish was
less because it hurt. It moves from ‘Before’
to ‘After’ and back again and you don’t know really what ‘After’ is but you
kind of have an idea and the whole entire thing, it’s heart-breaking – June’s stepmother
who’s just evil, her stepsister who is an accomplice in the torture and it’s
very questionable as to how unwitting an accomplice she is, and her Dad, who in
some fucked up way is as bad if not worse because even though he loves June and
even though he never actually participates he’s so blind to it all and yak, it’s all so terrible. I mean the abuse June suffers hurt me, but her
Dad, he just made me so angry, so angry it made my eyes sting.
I think it’s about
failure this book – about failure and the devastating power of a lie because let’s
be honest here, is there anything more terrifying than telling the truth and not
one. single. person. believing you? What do you even begin to do in that situation,
when the worst things are happening and the people you’re supposed to trust don’t
believe you. What are you supposed to do? & where is the line between right
and wrong and victim and perpetrator and oh, so many of the questions.
It ripped out my
soul this book, it made me question all that is good and right in the world and
the unfairness (and fuck if unfairness isn’t a strong enough word) of the whole
damn thing just shattered me. It’s powerful writing - more powerful than Seed and I thought that was pretty impressive - and it really is
phenomenal writing. I might have given it 5 stars except for you know, it broke
me. The story is (devastating) well considered and sensitive and honest – sometimes
brutally. The characters are well developed; seriously, this is villainy at its
best, and the whole slow development of June’s friendship with Blister will
burn you with its simple beauty and the language has moments of sheer gorgeousness.
If you can see past the fact that the subject matter means this is one of the
hardest books you’ll read for a while, then it’s absolutely worth giving it a
go. I’d say I’m glad I did, but I’m not sure I’m quite there yet.
