Your Heart Will Be broken

That really depends on your perspective. A story told from the perspective of someone who causes heartbreak is a really wild twist on that phrase. Because you get to experience the story through the mind of the person who’s causing all of the pain and you see all of the reasons why they think they’re doing the right thing, and then you can also see the devastation that they cause. So, you experience heartbreak of the victims in the story, but you also experience the heartbreak of the protagonist and the tragic folly of their actions. It’s a very complex and very unsettling kind of heartbreak, much more so than a simple story of victimization. The twist is in who the story is about, not what happens in the story.

The epilogue is set 10 years after the rest of the book. It’s a series of snapshots of the characters’ lives. We get to see a Christmas card, a text message on a phone screen, a photo of a garden. We piece together what each of the characters is up to and it’s so satisfying because it feels so real. We don’t get a lengthy explanation of each character’s life, we get glimpses, like scrolling through each of their social media accounts. It’s so ‘show, not tell’ and it’s done to perfection. Since this book, so many other books have attempted to do the same but none of them have quite managed it as successfully.

This would make for an amazing ending to a story, as well as an amazing soundtrack. I imagine a super mellow, acoustic, sad song, kept bare with minimal production. A simple voice and guitar would suffice. The song would fade out to nothing, no big, sweeping notes or ending music. The song would just sort of….end. It’s so emotional, and I imagine it to be a totally specific tone: not sad/angry, just tired/sad. Exhausted.

Reading it feels like watching a slow-motion train crash where you’re pulling for both sides to change direction before it’s too late, watching as each mistake plays out before you can even warn them to change course. It’s horrifically fascinating.

For me, the experience was not ‘enjoyable’ in any conventional sense – it was stressful, often frustrating, and, at times, even emotionally draining. But I did experience it. I found it to be utterly compelling and at times, I couldn’t look away. The wreckage of the characters’ lives at the end of the novel was left for me to attempt to piece together and that in itself is a skill – be it on an author to create such reactions, or on a reader to recognize them for what they are.

I’ve read recently – with much pleasure – The Pisces by Melissa Broder. As I said earlier, Notes on Heartbreak is a deeply emotional read and whilst The Pisces is a vastly different book, it also deals with the depths of heartbreak and the journey of the person left to pick up the pieces after. The book is wild and crazy and at times surreal, but it’s also very real and is a very humorous take on the typical heartbreak stories that we read about. Annie Lord is another author who tackles tough subject matters with honesty and Unflinching courage in her writing.

For an even more twisted take on relationships, you have to read Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan. The book is a smart and quirky dissection of the stresses of dating in your 30s and follows a protagonist as conflicted and as stuck in limbo as the narrator of Notes on Heartbreak. It’s fun and often laugh-out-loud and the dry humor has got me reading passages aloud to my flatmates to get their take. Even more, though, it’s good to have this sort of relatable take on a series of relationships, whole from the really bad to the just plain stumped.

If you are looking for something a little more lyrical but equally painful, I highly recommend Graham Greene’s classic The End of the Affair. The story is of a man whose obsessive love of a woman that ended in an affair culminates in her unexpected death, and in the years that follow, he struggles with his jealousy, anger and conflicts with his Christian faith. As with Notes on Heartbreak, the novel is intense and leaves its reader shaken. It is a stunning exploration of love, and is written with incredible precision and beauty.

Finally, I picked How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs because it’s different but also explores themes of love. This is a collection of short stories that follow a variety of characters, all dealing with love and relationships in different ways, from identities of families and cultures to how people are dealing with being diasporic. I find that this book is similar to Notes on Heartbreak in that the emotional range of the stories goes from extreme love to extreme hate, and in between there is a lot of love and it is so beautiful and relatable that it will make you feel all the emotions and hopefully see a little bit of yourself in the characters. Like with Notes on Heartbreak, reading How to Love a Jamaican will leave you feeling wrecked but better in the end.

The ending of ‘Rekindled Heartache’ was so beautiful and subtle. Yun made Jia a book with all the letters he never sent her during their time of separation. Instead of reading them all, Jia used the paper to make origami cranes with Yun while he was there and they covered the entire coffee table. I was wondering why he made so many and Yun asked him why he thought she used them all for. Jia replied ‘Because now they can reach you themselves’. Then he released one out the window. It was so beautiful. Those unspoken words of Yun’s finally got to leave the past behind and reach Yun. The last shot was of one of the cranes landing in a box in Yun’s old bedroom at his parents’ house. That’s where Jia used to sneak in through the window when she was a teenager.

First of all, this is an ending about release. Elara lets go of her hatred for the beast, her need for revenge, her identity as a weapon, her home and her past. The city lets go of a tyrant and a very parasitic magical crutch. And the story itself lets go of the need for a traditional climax. All that release creates a feeling of quiet emptiness at the end of the book. Not necessarily a bad empty feeling, though. It’s more like a room that’s been thoroughly cleaned after someone’s moved out. It’s melancholic, but also light. There’s room for a lot of things to happen in that empty space, and it’s not up to the story to fill it all out for the reader. The reader, and also the characters in the story, are left to their own devices to imagine what might happen next. That’s very rare in fiction.

I feel like I already have the perfect adaptation of The Ten Thousand Doors of January in audiobook form. Rebecca Soler does an incredible job as Evangeline and Jacks. Sometimes I think the best way to adapt a story is to leave the visuals to the reader’s imagination. It can be even more powerful than any CGI. Not every great story needs to be translated to screen with all of the inner thoughts and magical nuances of the story. Most of the time, there would be too much pressure to include everything. The way I feel about the audiobooks is that they are complete just the way they are. A film would be fun, but it wouldn’t be the same as having the audiobooks and being able to imagine things for myself. In a way, I’m already satisfied.

For readers who fell for the unapologetic messiness of Sour Heart, a new-to-you book might be Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, a wild ride that follows a Nigerian woman who is host to multiple spirits. Although immigrant-centric in theme, the book’s fragmented, visceral prose and its exploration of a disjointed identity are going to speak to fans of Zhang’s unflinching work. Also recommended is The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch, a dystopian novel written in raw, bodily prose by a fierce rebel of a writer. Zhang’s book isn’t easily matchable, but these two are offbeat enough to feel like kindred spirits.

I'm automatically skeptical of any story with a title this obviously negative. It's a marketing ploy to get readers hooked while promised miserable circumstances, only to be delivered a usual and predictable ‘happy ending’. But “The Broken Ring” did surprise me.

This is one of those stories where the ending is satisfying for the adults in the room, in that it doesn't abandon the gritty, realistic tone established at the beginning and turn into a saccharine confection. Instead, the remnants of their past and their personalities are there, but they've learned to deal with them as a team. Instead of a beam of bright sunlight lighting the way to their future, they have a reliable, shared lantern to light their way. A genuinely happy ending for adults. Relationships are work, not magic.