Beautiful Books - Paint it Black.

Paint It Black

by Janet Fitch

I didn't like this book at first. It was pretty but long and drawn out. Emotional, but not really sad for me; it jumped into a pool of this girl's misery, without really taking me on the beginning of the ride first. I didn't have an emotional connection. I got bored.
But I loved White Oleander, which is by the same author. So when I sat down to really get reading this year, I picked it back up.
I didn't regret it.

"People thought beauty was bullshit, just a Band-aid slapped over the abyss, but they couldn't be more wrong. It was like Lola Lola had said, beauty mattered, it was the only thing that fed you when everything else turned to shit."

It turned out to be an interesting mixture of really beautiful writing with a story/character that went up and down in my approval. Sometimes she was interesting and complex, other times she was whiney, self-obsessed, and too worried about what other people thought.

By the end, I was eager to know what would happen, and though I was disappointed in some ways, it was still a pretty good book. Very pretty writing, very emotional and in depth. 

Also, really made me want to make mint tea all the time. And I did, actually, a lot, for a while.

Which, by the way, is amazingly easy to make. Take mint, give it a rough chop/tear, and throw it in a tea pot with hot water. Sweeten lightly and drink in an adorable tea cup. So yummy.

"Through the tall windows, camellia bushes twenty feet high strained noon's passage with their winter green. They were so old they had grown into trees, bearing white flowers, a few of which floated in a crystal bowl on the table. This was all she wanted, to be allowed to lie still and drift and listen to Debussy, hidden away from the clear light of day that stood you against a wall and frisked you like a cop. A little softness was all she asked for. A stopped clock."

Overall a very emotional book, beautiful in it's descriptions and raw feeling. Wether or not I liked the story itself is a little less clear, but I can say with certainty that it was very pretty.

Related Posts: Beautiful Books :: White Oleander