The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
My rating: 5/5 cats
hope is the thing with feathers
and maybe it is, to cheerful people like emily dickinson, but this book is not about hope. it is about all of the scars love’s victims carry.
and there is nothing i do not love about it.
this book reminds me of traditional fairytales in their purest forms – before being sanitized or gentled for the presumed fragility of young minds. it positively drips with death and loss: people cutting out their own hearts, turning into birds, people suffering endlessly because of impossible loves.
and in the midst of all this, a girl is born with a pair of wings.
it is magical realism at the height of its potential. it is like marquez in its chronicling of the relentless suffering of the different generations of a family, and it is esquivel in its food-as-magic:
Happy smiles were shared between the bride and groom, but it was the cake their guests remembered – the vanilla custard filling, the buttercream finish, the slight taste of raspberries that had surely been added to the batter. No one brought home any slices of leftover cake to place under their pillow, hoping to dream of their future mate; instead, the guests… ate the whole cake and then had dreams of eating it again. After this wedding unmarried women woke in the night with tears in their eyes, not because they were alone, but because there wasn’t any cake left.
it is, quite simply, one of the best books i have ever read.
and maybe it is just a for-me perfect book – reading the other, less enthusiastic reviews here on goodreads made my heart ache. despite all my readers’ advisory training, where we are encouraged to behave as though no opinion is wrong, there is still a part of me that wants to grab people by their lapels and whisper “how could you?? how could you miss what this book is??”
people who are disappointed that the title is misleading because it is not only about the sorrows of ava lavender, but of her whole freaking family – i don’t even know how to respond to that. who says, “gee, i wish the story hadn’t been so rich and full. i wish that it had only been about this one wing’ed girl and not about the snowballing of familial sorrow that culminated in her birth and her own patch of sorrow. i’m just not a big fan of context.”
i don’t even know what to do with that.
i can understand the people who were flattened by how sad this book is. this book is YA in the same way that Tender Morsels is YA, which is to say – not your momma’s YA. it is dark and violent and features intercourse both consensual and not, there is murder and suicide, ghosts and untouched harpsichords, and there is just so much pain. but the pain and sorrow and darkness is also beautiful and lyrical and magical. and it is walton’s delicate language that lifts the story out of its own despair and makes it completely transcend the gloom. it is like watching something beautiful burn, and you have to acknowledge that flames are also beautiful in their own way, even as they destroy.
tiny little examples of such:
–Her mother’s scent was that of fresh-baked bread, tainted by a slightly brackish tone, as if the bread had been salted with tears.
and
–“Just remember, meu inima, my heart,” she would say, “royal blood flows through our veins and from our wounds.”
and even structurally, there are little surprises to the close reader – moments of mirroring between the thoughts and actions of characters, careful foreshadowing, unexpected word choices. this book is a true reader’s delight.
i absolutely adored it, and i am truly going to miss these characters.
i will leave you with this excerpt, because it seems fitting.
“It’s… dangerous for someone like me to be out in the open.”
As if in response, my wings started to flutter underneath their shroud. I gave the cloak a good yank.
“Someone like you? Someone different, you mean?”
I shrugged. “Yes,” I answered quietly, suddenly shy.
“So, is it dangerous for us or for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you the threat, or are we?”
“You are! Well, They are.” I motioned to the cluster of teenagers. Of course it was them.
Rowe peered at me thoughtfully. “Funny. I suspect they might say otherwise.” He stood.
“And that might just be the root of the problem: we’re all afraid of each other, wings or no wings.”
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i am only fifty pages in, but i’m calling it – this is an absolute MUST READ!
go to netgalley. now.
