Title: The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
Author: Marina Keegan
Publisher: Scribner
Release Date: April 8th 2014
Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Synopsis: An affecting and hope-filled posthumous collection of essays and stories from the talented young Yale graduate whose title essay captured the world’s attention in 2012 and turned her into an icon for her generation.
Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.
As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her unforgettable last essay for the Yale Daily News, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. She had struck a chord.
Even though she was just twenty-two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. The Opposite of Loneliness is an assemblage of Marina’s essays and stories that, like The Last Lecture, articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world.
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My Thoughts
“But as I watched him smile back at me and zip his coat, I saw everything in the world build up and then everything in the world fall again.”
This collection of short stories stayed with me long after I finished reading. They actually inspired me to start writing again, something I hadn’t done in a good while. Keegan displayed a great understanding of the world and human emotion, all while basically telling us she was still figuring things out for herself.
From a man trying to find his lost engagement ring to a mother watching a nativity play, these stories demonstrate how we’re all searching for something maybe we’ll never get, or maybe we had it but lost it along the way. I’m still amazed that she, at 22, was able to write such amazing stories with a hope and wonder that seemed beyond her years, all while sounding like someone her age.
I wasn’t able to finish one story and just start the next one right away. I had to take a moment, think on what I had read, and in some cases reread the story all over again. This isn’t a quick read, despite the length of the book. I absolutely loved reading and rereading the stories, and highly recommend that you pick this one up!
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