McDonalds ice cream sucks. I remember thinking that years and years ago, the last time I had it, but I decided to give this "classy" McCafe a second chance, as, after my travel- and waiting-filled day, it is the only food place near the hostel and I am starving.
Also I just looked to my left and saw a hefty woman grope her equally hefty boyfriend's crotch. Oh god. McDonald's. O_O
I have spent an inordinate amount of today sitting quietly in cafe corners, far outstaying my I-bought-your-food right to a seat. I had to leave the hostel at ten but my train for Liverpool didn't leave til four thirty and I've done everything in Stratford worth doing. So I did laundry. And went to a used bookshop. Both things I somehow thought would take more time, but I still managed to sit in Starbucks for an hour, The Tea Room Cafe for two hours, and the train station for three. And then, of course, spend an hour and a half on one train, half an hour in another station, then two hours on yet another train. And after navigating my way to the hostel dragging my stupid luggage, sitting in Mcdonalds. Stealing their Internet (hey, it's free) and eating their almost-water lettuce and a Cadbury McFlurry (sadly, the two healthiest things on the menu).
But on the bright side, I bought two books for £4! Seriously, why don't they sell $2 books in the US? They're new books too, and in good condition. I read one today, while I was doing all the sitting and waiting, and that's where the glass comes in.
The book I read is called The Girl With the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw. It was a very mature, beautiful, sad, and magical book - not because of its content really, which encompasses fantastical beasts (that aren't actually that important contextually but have a more subtle metaphorical role) and death and illness and love and how the past haunts the present (but only because the present unwittingly lets it) - but because of the delicacy, sensitivity, and honesty with which it was written. I have never read a book quite like it (and never will again, I suspect) and it's hard to say I enjoyed the experience. I loved the book, yes - adored it, even - but it's not an easy story to wrap yourself around. On the one hand it's a painfully true love story between a reclusive young man who can't stand the idea of touching people and a once-adventurous girl whose feet, to her immense confusion, are turning into glass. The setting is a remote British isle riddled with strange, inexplicable things hiding in the bogs that go unnoticed except by the odd few, whom this story concerns. Despite the elements of fantasy, this is not a fantastical book. At times it can be uncomfortable in its rawness, it's incisiveness into these characters' struggling souls as they face every unglamorous new emotion possible, where before they were carefree and numb, with all the pain of the past buried under the distractions of seclusion and routine. A truly, truly fascinating and moving book. Worth reading if you like to be challenged and left with questions you otherwise would not have thought to ask yourself. Strangely beautiful, quietly powerful, vibrantly colorless, and unfailingly even-toned. A work of literary merit.
No comments:
Post a Comment