If I Stay - Book Review
RECENZIE SCRISĂ DE RĂZVAN ANTON. A apărut inițial pe Teoriile unui blogger.
If I Stay is not a book. It is an experience. Of loss. Of life. Of death. Of everything put together. It reveals things we have all thought about in a completely different way. We are all told that dying is like seeing a bright light, seeing our body from up above. What we are never told is that dying or living could be our choice.
This is what happens to Mia. A 17 year-old girl who loses her family in a car accident and is left in a coma, with severe internal injuries. Her consciousness is awake, though. It's the voice of her consciousness that gets us through the story. She knows everything: that she's a wreck on a hospital bed. That she no longer has her parents, or her brother. That she's left without the ones who were most dear to her. That if she made it through this, her life would be totally different. That maybe death would be better than that kind of life. And she has to make the toughest decision of all: live without a family or die with one?
The Cello player with a bright prospect of going to Julliard, the teenage girl happily in love with Adam, the rock star, suddenly a shade of what she was. A voice. Full of doubts. But would it be different for you?
'If I Stay' is valuable to the reader precisely because it makes him ask such questions. Of course, Mia is Mia and this is fiction, and no one really knows how it feels to be somewhere between dead and alive, but what if you, as a reader, were in Mia's shoes? Would you have the power to move on? Knowing that you'll never see your father smoking his pipe, knowing that your mother will never make you pancakes for breakfast, that your little brother will never grow old, have his own children, live at least some of the experiences you've had?
Living life on the edge, as Mia does, makes you appreciate it more than you normally would. Mia is a voice of the value of life. A value we ever so often forget. Most of us give reasons for our actions. Which means that we look for reasons to live, for a family, for some sort of success, for the comfort of a house next to our loved ones. But what if we had to live without all that? Out of the blue. With no questions asked and with no right to answer. What if we had 10 reasons to let go and one reason only to keep on living?
Most of us make a living, few of us make a life. 'If I Stay' is a statement about life and death and what makes the difference between the two of them. Sometimes it can be merely holding hands. With the right person. Live... for the sake of love!
If I Stay is not a book. It is an experience. Of loss. Of life. Of death. Of everything put together. It reveals things we have all thought about in a completely different way. We are all told that dying is like seeing a bright light, seeing our body from up above. What we are never told is that dying or living could be our choice.
This is what happens to Mia. A 17 year-old girl who loses her family in a car accident and is left in a coma, with severe internal injuries. Her consciousness is awake, though. It's the voice of her consciousness that gets us through the story. She knows everything: that she's a wreck on a hospital bed. That she no longer has her parents, or her brother. That she's left without the ones who were most dear to her. That if she made it through this, her life would be totally different. That maybe death would be better than that kind of life. And she has to make the toughest decision of all: live without a family or die with one?
The Cello player with a bright prospect of going to Julliard, the teenage girl happily in love with Adam, the rock star, suddenly a shade of what she was. A voice. Full of doubts. But would it be different for you?
'If I Stay' is valuable to the reader precisely because it makes him ask such questions. Of course, Mia is Mia and this is fiction, and no one really knows how it feels to be somewhere between dead and alive, but what if you, as a reader, were in Mia's shoes? Would you have the power to move on? Knowing that you'll never see your father smoking his pipe, knowing that your mother will never make you pancakes for breakfast, that your little brother will never grow old, have his own children, live at least some of the experiences you've had?
Living life on the edge, as Mia does, makes you appreciate it more than you normally would. Mia is a voice of the value of life. A value we ever so often forget. Most of us give reasons for our actions. Which means that we look for reasons to live, for a family, for some sort of success, for the comfort of a house next to our loved ones. But what if we had to live without all that? Out of the blue. With no questions asked and with no right to answer. What if we had 10 reasons to let go and one reason only to keep on living?
Most of us make a living, few of us make a life. 'If I Stay' is a statement about life and death and what makes the difference between the two of them. Sometimes it can be merely holding hands. With the right person. Live... for the sake of love!