Second Warped Musing

Last night around 11:56 EST I finished the MASSIVE book This Is All by Aidan Chambers. I had started this book in August of last year, then in about October, after stopping several times to read other books, I just quit it altogether, I was about halfway through and just frankly got bored. Then a week or two ago I picked it up and read about twenty pages, instantly interested again. Though I stopped and read something else again and again. But after I finished other books I would read a few pages (well more then a FEW) and eventually just got so sucked in that while reading another book, whenever that book got to be to heavy in the sadness department I would pick up This Is All and lose myself in Cordelia's world all over again. It got to be that I HAD to finish the other book I was reading, so the moment I was done I picked up This Is All and went to town. I managed to finish half of book three, all of four and almost all of five by the time I needed to "go to bed" last night. Then, since I just couldn't sleep, I stayed up and read until 11:56 PM EST and finished This Is All. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Partially because I just didn't want it to end, and partially because it was just the saddest story I had ever read. This book (not including the afterword and glossary) is 808 pages. In every since line of text you learn something new about the way Cordelia thinks. You learn something about life, or love, or relationships, or friendship, or about why girl's behave the way they do, you learn something in every line. I have read books that are "sad" or "heartbreaking" but NONE even begin to compare to this book that I have read. It may be because I relate to Cordelia when she's younger and sometimes when she's older, or because I have never been able to know a character as well as Cordelia, but I think the main reason why this book touched me in such a distinctive way was because Cordelia felt more real then any other character, it felt like you were reading words from a real person. To me at least. I know for a fact that I have never cried with such abandon or as hard as I did during the entire sixth box of this book, except for the very last page, page 808. When I got to page 808 my tears had finally stopped flowing (as well as my nose THANKFULLY) and as I read the last words it felt as if the book had finally come full circle, it was finally, truly over, in ways no other book has ever been. You know exactly what happened to Cordelia, and you know nothing can ever change it (though she's fictional) and by page 808 you had accepted the fate that had befallen her and you had your closure (or whatever you want to call it) and you felt GOOD again, because you finished it, because it was over, but most of all, because nothing could have changed it, nothing could have happened differently, and you went through all stages those silly stages, and accepted it. Once and for all. "To live is to remember, to die is to forget."