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I wanted to write a book review for the site just to switch gears a little, and I think I found the perfect candidate to kick things off...
Despite an incredibly misleading title, "My Heart And Other Black Holes" is the kind of book I really wish I had access to as a teenager... its tale makes waves now, and I'm sure it would have had an even bigger impact back then, when the internet was in its own infancy and mental health was still a pretty taboo topic. The kind of "forbidden knowledge" that would have allowed for the events depicted here to unfold on some dark corner of the web.
This is the story of Aysel and Roman, two teenagers ruled by their past and who believe they have no future ahead of them, so they both take their frustrations online and end up getting paired as Suicide Partners on a site that provides such services. The book never deviates from this goal nor does it allow itself to stray too far from the path leading to the moment of their mutual offing, but that doesn't mean that it isn't silently campaigning for at least one of them to back down at the last second... and it's in those moments that I think the true value of this story begins to shine, when you see the kind of hole their deaths would leave on those who care about them and how honestly missed they would be once they are gone. It's beautiful, really. And very tragic, too, because they can't see that. They just can't.
The book also has an element of realism that I had come to appreciate on re-reads... let me explain: imagine you are desperate enough to go online looking for someone to take the plunge with. Imagine you find this person. Now, imagine both of you have this all worked out perfectly... would you still trust this person to go through with it? Neither Aysel nor Roman are there yet and the vast majority of the book is spent on them building the relationship that would allow them to trust the other to hold their end of the bargain. It's absolutely heartbreaking seeing poor Roman's mother being genuinely happy that her tortured son has finally found someone to be friends with, just for this person to be the one who's going to take him away from her while lying to her face about how awesome things are. Same thing happens to Aysel's relatives as both Roman and her do their very best to pretend like life's never been better. This part of the story always gets me, particularly since I have learned that suicidal people tend to act their happiest on the weeks leading up to their end. I feel for the families of two fictional characters as if they were my own relatives, and I commend author Jasmine Warga for pulling this off so splendidly.
Another thing I like about this book is that it does an excellent job telling you that both of our leads have kind of point when it comes to wanting to end their very lives. The book never dismisses them outright and, while it really is trying to steer them away from this idea, you get shown plenty of evidence that their suffering is real, although in vastly different ways: Aysel is the daughter of a Turkish immigrant who committed murder in the US, killing the town's most promising athlete for shoplifting in his store. No-one is directly racist towards her as a result of this, but she is treated very differently both because of her association with the guy and the fact that she isn't American in name nor skin color.
In Roman's case, his cross to bear is that everybody keeps treating him the same after what happened (his reasons for wanting to die ARE a spoiler, and so won't be reveled here), which is downright torture for the guy. His life is anything but normal, and the fact that everyone keeps treating him nicely and if he just had come down with a cold or something is very telling of the kind of hell he has to live with. He's screaming on the inside, yet no-one is listening.
But the thing that punches me on the gut every single time is the fact that Roman's pet turtle is the plot devise around which everything clicks for the rest of the world... without spoiling anything, just imagine this scenario: why would you EVER leave your pet with days worth of food if you are just going to take a small drive with a friend? It's... yeah. It's a really good use of a story element. And one that caught me off-guard.
Aysel and Roman are two of the most complex characters I have ever had the pleasure of reading and I just adore the fact that they both think they are building each other's path towards the afterlife while continuously sabotaging each other by giving themselves reasons to back down. They are just too thick and laser-focused on how bad things are to notice. I think a lot of us can relate to that.
I won't tell you how the book ends, only that it's one of the very few on the entire challenge that didn't disappoint me one bit.
I can't recommend it enough, and I'm truly sorry that I didn't rank it higher when I had the chance.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
