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Everything Beautiful Began After (2011)

by Simon Van Booy(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0061661481 (ISBN13: 9780061661488)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Harper Perennial

review 1: This was a really beautifully-written book, and a beautiful/tragic story. I did feel though that often it was more a collection of (sometimes, breathtakingly) beautifully-written sentences that were a bit tangential to the story, and perhaps the author could have integrated them better into the plot, as there were points where it was bordering on becoming pretentious or being perceived as a mere display of stylistic writing skill. Perhaps his later books would combine style and plot more convincingly, and I will happily read them in the future.
review 2: van booy's 'everything beautiful began after' is quietly poetic; sparse, yet tempered with such richness in deceptively simple lines where a vast space is afforded the reader to fill with experience gathered by... more each of us over time; there is no need for van booy to explain much--we intuitively understand the murky sorrow and desire, fear and hope that each character is burdened. in this sense, one's role in its reading becomes equally important as van booy's writing. through the subtle nudging of a string of words, the reader is offered the opportunity to let the mind dwell on moments which fade in and out of focus, leaving it up to you to reveal the larger canvas set forth. for is it not our nature, just as it is henry's, to be continuously confronted with darkness and partial truths, bequested only snippets of memories and moments of understanding to somehow serve as guideposts for the future? we are never provided full access, but must rely on our interpretation of life's endless fractured moments; each of us a vessel impervious to the other no matter the intimate physical space we share. a visceral awareness of this lack fosters a desire to fill this hole buried deep within. when one crosses paths with another who seems shaped to fill this space so well, the burden of fulfillment inevitably creates a fear of unravelling once again in absence of the other. and when that time comes, what are we left with but those memories and moments to study and decipher, in the hopes a lost language can be revealed once again, providing us with clues to a path to continue onward. there is a sensitivity to such sorrow in van booy's words, which illustrates perfectly how each of us are so lost, desperately trying to find our way. less

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