Book #83: "Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak"

I really want this title to start with "A", as in "A Brief Chronicle" and it doesn't and it annoys me that it doesn't and I find the omission discombobulating. I find it hard enough to stay combobulated on my own, book title! (Let's just pause for a moment here to acknowledge that either the internet or my phone–don't know for sure–doesn't care for "discombobulating" which actually IS a real word, but has no issue whatever with "combobulated" which isn't. Spell check. Pffft.)

My unreasonable demand for indefinite articles aside, I loved this book wholeheartedly. I'm sure part of that was the drastic tonal shift from my previous read; I finished that and started this in the Chicago airport on my way home. But mostly I fell in love with the writing, the characters, the teenage angst. At this point in my life, twenty-something years after graduating high school, I remember that everything turned up to 11 mentality vividly, but with enough perspective on it to feel some impatience with the protagonist's inability to face what was in front of her the whole time. Especially with a college scholarship to NYU and a real actual writing job hanging in the balance! I'm certainly no paragon of getting things done by a deadline, even now, but seeing opportunities I would have killed for at that age (and this one!) being treated so cavalierly made me itchy.

Still, it's a lovely, lyrical, lilting little story that made me a trifle wistful for a time when all I could see was how much was ahead of me. To have those heart-stopping seconds of realizing first love; to feel the anguish of a dream shattered and a future reorganized; to be in the summer after high school when your child self was finished and your adult self was endless possibilities. I try not to live with regrets–even my worst choices have given me valuable experiences, and I'm happy with who I am because of them–but occasionally, with the right inspiration, I wander into a fantasy of all the Mes I could have been. 

Author: Adi Alsaid

Potentially objectionable content: Some language and sexual references (nothing graphic or overt)