– I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. –
Published by Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books on 04 Oct 2016
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In the bestselling tradition of A Man Called Ove and the beloved film Love Actually, a quirky, socially awkward man goes on a quest to find his wife a last-minute Christmas gift and encounters several distractions—including bumping into his ex-girlfriend who was the one who got away.
Henry Quantum has several thoughts going through his head at any given time, so it’s no surprise when he forgets something very important—specifically, a Christmas gift for his wife, which he realizes on the morning of December 23. Henry sets off that day in search of the perfect present for her: a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume. But much like Henry’s ever-wandering mind, his quest takes him in different and unexpected directions, including running into the former love of his life, Daisy. His wife, meanwhile, unhappy in her marriage, is hiding a secret of her own. And Daisy, who has made the unsettling choice of leaving her husband to strike out on her own, finds herself questioning whether she and Henry belong together after all.
A sweet, funny, and touching debut from author Pepper Harding shows how the seemingly insignificant events of one single day can change our lives forever—perhaps, if we’re lucky, for the better.
I chose this book because…
“…shows how the seemingly insignificant events of one single day can change our lives forever…” That line sold it for me. I truly believe that it’s the little things that make our lives. I love that his mind wanders, and I can’t wait to follow it on an adventure. I love that what many people might see as an errand is instead approached as a “quest.” Who isn’t curious about what could have been, about the one that got away? I’m not saying that I’m rooting for Daisy and Henry because I’m not–I’m not a fan of breaking up marriages–but I’ll indulge in a story. I wonder what Henry’s wife’s secret is. Also, don’t hate me but I’m so ready for Christmas.
Upon reading it…
I went to Bangkok to compete in a swim meet in middle school, and I remember sticking with a girl because she was closest to my age, and because she seemed really cool and she was also really fast at swimming. We were having a good chat on the bus, and by the end of it, we were like, “So… how did we even end up talking about this??” and then we proceeded to attempt to trace back our conversation and figure it out. Getting lost in conversation is a good feeling.
It’s kind of like that game I used to play when I was a kid, where your friend would give you two seemingly unrelated topics, and your job was to start at the Wikipedia page for the first topic, then strategically choose hyperlinks to click to take you to different pages and ultimately get to the Wikipedia page of the second topic. Have you ever played that game before? I haven’t played it in ages because who has time for that anymore, but back in the day…
Anyways, this is why I anticipated I’d be totally taken by Henry Quantum and the way his mind would wander. And it held true through the first few pages, until he started objectifying women, which totally turned me off his personality (was that English? You get what I mean). There were also some parts of the book that were kinda racist. I started getting the feeling that his relationship problems weren’t because of the women in his life but because of him.
Perhaps I was supposed to be on his side and feel bad for him because of his tyrant of a wife Margaret, and instead root for him and Daisy, who loves him for who he is.
Margaret was a superficial, two-dimensional character. I hoped that reading the chapters told from her point of view would enlighten me about her attitude toward Henry. I was prepared to open my mind and take her side, to understand everything that led up to now, to understand all the pent up unhappiness that would make sense of all the slight things that put her off, however trivial. But I didn’t get that. Also that scene on the bridge–how could she be so callous, so selfish?
As for Daisy, although she was a nicer character, she was also two-dimensional. She was so obviously the opposite of Margaret, and there was no complexity to her.
Also Denise came out of nowhere and I’m not sure she was entirely necessary.
Overall, I found the end of the story quite depressing (highlight for potential spoiler: and, frankly, irresponsible. I mean c’mon, at least have the decency to get divorced first.) and didn’t feel like there was any character development, albeit the story spans the time of one day, but I think there could have been so much potential with the character of Henry Quantum and with his quest.
★★★☆☆
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Landline by Rainbow Rowell
**quotes have not been checked against a finished copy of the book**
However, when he reached for the soap his hand froze mid-grab because the water bouncing off his shoulders made him think about the miraculous impermeability of his own skin, and this made him think of the wonder of nature, which, when he thought about it, included the entire cosmos, and thus the Hubble telescope came into his mind and the pictures of the galaxies he had seen at the NASA booth at the Sausalito Art Festival back in September, particularly the Sombrero Galaxy, which actually did look like a sombrero, and this led him to recall something that had been drilled into his head since junior high school, namely that light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and when you look at a distant object, like, say, the Sombrero Galaxy, what you are actually seeing is how the object appeared millions of years ago (in the case of the Sombrero Galaxy, thirty million years) and not how it is now; in fact, who could say what it looks like now?
In fact, everything outside of himself was happening in the past—that soap dish, for instance—it was already over, done, finished, kaput, history. He had been a sometime practitioner of Zen and was always going on about living in the present—the breath of the present, they called it—but now he had to admit he could never achieve that goal no matter how hard he tried.
Why do people put things off? Why don’t we just do what we say we are going to do? And he wondered if perhaps there was some sort of survival benefit to procrastination, because otherwise, why would we have this trait?
The first person to make butter—you have to stir that cream a long fucking time to make butter—why would anyone do that in the first place? And yet they did. And that’s the whole human endeavor right there.
He thought about the cave paintings at Chauvet, and the film about them, and how art at the very beginning of its existence was so extraordinarily beautiful, and that the world in those days was filled with Rembrandts and Titians, only they didn’t know it, they thought they were doing magic, not art, which maybe aren’t so different after all.
He could feel her presence in that darkened state, but could never quite touch her. An infinity of space, that’s what it was. A vacuum. Yet space, he reminded himself, was never really empty—it teemed with secret energies and ineluctable particles always in motion. That must have been what he felt all those years. The radiation emanating from her disdain, the dark energy of her contempt.
That’s what scared her and that’s what she wanted back. But you can’t have things back. It’s like going on the same vacation twice. It’s never the same.
This all got back to the question of seeing. Fashion looked great one year and stupid the next. But the clothes—they stayed just the same. How is it they no longer looked the same? How is it the woman you loved last year is no longer the woman you love this year? And to whom was he referring?
Secrets cause pain, and the avoidance of pain was his current preoccupation.
Because it seemed to him that the vastness of the universe was no different that the vastness of this man’s soul, and the impossibility of understanding either of them oppressed him so much that he cried out, “Do something, for God’s sake!”
That’s how wars are started! he thought. Someone blurts out a hurtful word and even though he didn’t mean anything by it the other guy says something back and before you know it, nuclear winter!
Because no one really controls anything, do they? Not when they’re in the middle of it. You may think you have a handle on something, like history, but you don’t, you can’t. It’s just a trick of perspective, a fun-house mirror, some version of the world that has nothing to do with reality, because none of us know what is happening to us, ever.
You don’t have to save me. Nobody has to save me.
This, she now knew, is how the universe conspires for love. It conspires to teach you something. Only you have to be willing to learn. It conspires to take you to undiscovered countries. Only you have to stay the course.
She finally understood she had loved him not for what he did for her but for what he allowed her to do for herself; and that was the core of it, that’s what that fire was, that is what she wanted back, and that is what she had lost forever.
But say the word “love” and immediately you think of Romeo and Juliet or Doctor Zhivago or Brokeback Mountain–and everyone seems to know what you are talking about, and yet to live through love is to know nothing at all.