Love, Fantasy and Cecelia Ahern

I spent the last months reading Cecelia Ahern and I love her uncanny wit on love and human emotions and how she injected a bit of fantasy on its plot. I have read six of her books: A place called Here, P.S I love you, If you could see me now, Where Rainbows end, The Book of Tomorrow and Thanks for the Memories (in that chronological order)  until I stopped and now shifted to Haruki Murakami.

Among the six Ahern books I've read, my favorites are: A place called Here, P.S I love you and If you could see me now.

In A place called Here, Ahern recognized the reality that most often than not, we feel lost and we lose ourselves, if not, a considerable part of ourselves.It is that inevitable human nature that makes us a little more human. The story revolved around Sandy and her obsession of finding lost people and about this special place called "Here" where lost people, things and memories live in.Sandy is a part of a "Missing Persons Agency" and  in one of her investigations of finding the lost brother of her client Jack Ruttle, she actually went missing herself.

I went berserk went Ahern mischievously came up with such a place called "Here". People in "Here" use our lost things (clothes, socks, pens etc.) and can be grabbed from a shop where lost things show up. Lost memories of people such as the distinct laughter of a lost brother also cohabited "Here" as every now and then that the laughter was played like a background music in that town.

A quote from A place called Here: "I can only assume that there’s only one thing more frustrating than not being able to find someone, and that’s not being found. I would want someone to find me, more than anything."

I finished reading this book on February and immediately followed up on an e-book of P.S I love you. I do hope  I can still find a decent copy of this book since I am planning of re-reading it. I watched the movie two years ago and would definitely recommend everyone to watch it as it gave justice to the book. I observed that each of Ahern's book centered on a specific human  attribute as  P.S I love you focused on how Holly went through the grieving process over her dead husband by receiving 10 letters from him that were written when her husband was still alive. The letters contained directions on how will Holly live each waking day without Gary on her side. I had the most tearjerking moments with this book than the other Ahern books.

Quotes from P.S I Love You: 
"She had been given a wonderful gift: life. Sometimes it was cruelly taken away too soon, but it's what you did with it that counted, not how long it lasted." 

"Finding someone you love and who loves you back is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. But finding a true soul mate is an even better feeling. A soul mate is someone who understands you like no other, loves you like no other, will be there for you forever, no matter what. They say that nothing lasts forever, but I am a firm believer in the fact that for some, love lives on even after we're gone." 

It took me a while to finally moved on from P.S I love you to "If you could see me now". Every now and then after my shifts and before I go to sleep, I  would open my computer and began sobbing  on some of my favorite lines in that book (especially when my roommates were all gone for work). I bought this book three weeks before I actually started reading it. And this time, Ahern concentrated on the struggles of Elizabeth in finding love the unconventional way and ended up losing it in still an unconventional way. The story is about how Elizabeth  Egan, a very serious workaholic  who fell in love with Ivan, the imaginary friend of her six year old nephew, Luke. The book was the most metaphorical of all Ahern books  but with a substantial volume of playfulness and humor.

Quotes from If you could see me now:
"When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart when that breaks it is completely silent. You would think as it s so important it would make the loudest noise in the whole world or even have some sort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it is silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain. If there is a noise it is internal. It screams and no one can hear it but you. It screams so loud your ears ring and your head aches. It trashes around in your chest like a great white shark caught in the sea it roars like a mother bear whose cub has been taken. That is what it looks like and that is what it sounds like a trashing panicking trapped great big beast roaring like a prisoner to its own emotions. But that s the thing about love no one is untouchable." 


"She wanted to be irresponsible, she wanted to be looked after, to be told that she didn't have to worry about a thing and that someone else would take care of everything. How easy life would be without having grown-up problems to worry about. And then she could grow up all over again..."
 

It was in mid-April when I gobbled on Ahern's Where Rainbows end. I was really grateful that in spite of not having a hard copy of this book, I was able to download an e-book of it under a different title: Love, Rosie. This book is about the bittersweet  childhood friendship of Rosie and Alex who after three decades still managed to be the best of friends in contempt of having strong feelings for each other. It highlights the fact that Rosie and Alex has undeniably fallen in love with each other but afraid of admitting their feelings thus making bad choices and suffering the consequences  of those choices. In the end, they both end up together however, I was disappointed  because I believe that they deserve each other more than ending up in their 40s. They were both too egoistic in their own self-centered worlds and wasted an awful lot of time dodging their feelings. It was a nice read especially that the plot involved a different style of writing as it was narrated in emails, letters etc.

Even before "Where Rainbows End", I am completely convinced that in real life,  bestfriends really end up with each other.

Quotes from Where Rainbows End:
  "Our life is made up of time; our days are measured in hours, our pay measured by those hours, our knowledge is measured by years. We grab a few quick minutes in our busy day to have a coffee break. We rush back to our desks, we watch the clock, we live by appointments. And yet your time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. In other words, if you could change anything, would you?" 

"There's no limit to what you can dream. You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities. Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you're hit by the realization that you can't be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less."

School has started in June and I am still not yet over with my Ahern marathon. This time, I got hold of Thanks for the Memories and this was my least favorite. It took me a month to finish it and it was dragging me to boredom. It seems like Ahern just forced to interject fantasy in the plot, nevertheless it is an "OK" read. The book was about a newly divorced Joyce Conway and her recuperation  from a near death experience and how her life entangled with Justin Hitchcock who turned out to be her blood donor.

A Quote from Thanks for the Memories:

"Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter."

I thought I was giving up on Ahern because of that book on blood transfusion, but Ahern was actually redeemed in "The Book of Tomorrow". Contrary to the last book I read, Ahern focused more on life than fantasy. It is about the journey of Tamara Goodwin as she struggles to live each day with a burden of a depressed mother to look after.  In the story,Tamara found a book that revealed her future one day at a time and how that book disclosed that she had an interesting past that will help in her mother's healing.

A quote from The Book of Tomorrow:
 "What if we knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we fix it? Could we?"


There is still one more Ahern book that I haven't read: The Gift. But for now, I'll stop my Ahern marathon as I devour Murakami's Norwegian Wood.

[Get Facebook Comment For Blogger]