There’s a unique sort of eccentricity and, dare I say it, magic, that surrounds second-hand bookstores. There’s also a unique sort of intellectual pretentiousness that surrounds novels about how great novels are. Cath Crowley’s award-winning Words in Deep Blue blends a bit of one with a little of the other and somehow manages to be poignant rather than snobbish and literary, weaving together a story about love, grief, and the strange power that words have to preserve moments and feelings that are otherwise gone. There’s a somewhat dull collection of straight teen love triangles clustered in there as well, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Rachel and Henry have been best friends since they were tiny, and because this is YA and they’re a boy and a girl respectively, we can reasonably assume where this is going. Just before Rachel’s family is due to move out of town, Henry starts dating the beautiful, air-headed and kind of nasty Amy (all optimal qualities for a romantic rival), and Rachel realises this is her last chance to tell him How She Really Feels. She leaves a letter confessing her love tucked into The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock because she knows it’s his favourite poem, then vanishes into the night. In all the letters he sends her at her new address, Henry never acknowledges the love confession, instead opting to write gleefully about his adventures with his super cool new girlfriend. Rachel, increasingly and understandably bitter, lets communication with her once-dearest friend sputter out, to the point where she doesn’t even tell him when her younger brother drowns. Continue reading
The Afictionado 