Book Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

This is not a spoiler-free review. I REPEAT, this is NOT a spoiler-free review. In order for me to properly voice my thoughts about this book, I have to tell you something that happens almost at the end of All the Bright Places.

But first, with that out of the way, here’s the usual review run-up.

First, the synopsis of All the Bright Places, pulled from Amazon:

“Theodore Finch is fascinated by death. Every day he thinks of ways he might kill himself, but every day he also searches for—and manages to find—something to keep him here, and alive, and awake.

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her small Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school—six stories above the ground— it’s unclear who saves whom. Soon it’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink. . . .”

Next, the cover, which I like:

It does a great job of illustrating some of the most beautiful aspects of the story without really giving anything away.

Finally, here’s my review of All the Bright Places!

To start, this is a really great YA book. In general, I quite enjoyed it. The characters are unique, relatable, and realistic. Their struggles feel real, gritty, and personal. And the love story is as warm and fuzzy as it is heartbreaking.

The plot is quirky and adorable. It takes you on a romp through some of the most odd and wacky places in Indiana as part of a school project that Violet and Finch have to do. The family dynamics are interesting and dynamic.

Also, in writing a novel with mental illness at its very core, Jennifer Niven does a good job.

There is one particular quote which I find quite poignant. It is from Finch’s point of view, when he is at a suicide support group. TW: mental illness, self harm, suicide, labels, harsh language: “I want to get away from the stigma they all clearly feel just because they have an illness of the mind as opposed to, say, an illness of the lungs or blood. I want to get away from all the labels. ‘I’m OCD,’ ‘I’m depressed,’ ‘I’m a cutter,’ they say, like these are the things that define them. One poor bastard is ADHD, OCD, BPD, bipolar, and on top of it all has some sort of anxiety disorder. I don’t even know what BPD stands for. I’m the only one here who is just Theodore Finch” (285).

There is SO much to unpack in this quote. First, something I’m always talking and thinking about is stigma. Finch wants to get away from that, which is completely normal and understandable. But it’s also important to challenge it. Finch also wants to get away from labels. I agree that it’s harmful to label yourself as your illness. Anxiety is not who I am. I prefer to say that I have an anxiety disorder, and not say that I’m an anxious person. Mostly because I’m not always an anxious person. But also because our mental illnesses do not define us.

However, it is likely that Finch has bipolar disorder, and it is not officially diagnosed. His school counsellor is starting to go down that road. I wonder if Finch could understand his diagnosis and had been given a label earlier, if things could be different for him. Maybe that’s the point of the story. There’s definitely more to unpack here, but I’ll save that for my mental health blog, Lexical Abandon.

So, like I said, I think Niven does a pretty fantastic job writing about mental illness in All the Bright Places.

Until…

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Finch dies by suicide.

And the most important part of my point in this case is the wording. My wording, not Niven’s.

Her wording was committed suicide. Which I vehemently disagree with. Again, I’m going to say more about this on my personal blog, Lexical Abandon. However, it deserves talking about here as well. Saying that a person committed suicide gives their passing the connotation of a crime. Which it is not. It is unfortunate. And terribly, terribly sad. It is heartbreaking. It’s a tragedy that hurts other people. But it is not a crime. And most times, it is not even a choice.

People who die by suicide are not criminals. They are not inherently bad. They’ve just lost the battle with a disorder, just like people who die from cancer or heart attack have lost the battle with a disease. I would argue that people who die by suicide are closer to victims than they are criminals.

Every time I encounter the phrase “commit/committed/commits suicide,” I challenge it. Vocally. And I invite you to as well.

The thing that I find most interesting is that in her afterword, Niven uses “died by suicide,” not “committed.” I wonder why she chose the other wording in the actual story. I wonder if perhaps she thought it would be more realistic for a teenager to not know the right wording. I don’t know.

Let’s work to end the stigma, and help people who suffer with various mental disorders and who experience suicidal ideation or thoughts of suicide.

With that said…

Overall, I give All the Bright Places 4/5 stars. It’s a page-turner (not in the sense that the actual plot is incredibly exciting, it just keeps you hooked). Further, it deals quite well with issues surrounding mental illness until the end. And it pulled at my heartstrings all the way through.

Enjoy your reading (but prepare to need tissues).

– Paperback Patronus

Book Review: Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things is the second book by blogger The Bloggess, aka Jenny Lawson.

I have been wanting to read Furiously Happy since it came out in 2016. I have no idea why I only got to it now. First, because of its seriously eye-catching cover, and then because I found out about its content. We’ll get to that in a second.

Here’s that cover:

Yes, that is a taxidermied raccoon. And yes, it belongs to Lawson.

And here is the synopsis of Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things from Amazon:

“In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.

As Jenny says:

“Some people might think that being ‘furiously happy’ is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he’s never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos.

“Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you’d never guess because we’ve learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, ‘We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.’ Except go back and cross out the word ‘hiding.'”

Furiously Happy is about “taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they’re the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It’s the difference between “surviving life” and “living life”. It’s the difference between “taking a shower” and “teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair.” It’s the difference between being “sane” and being “furiously happy.”

Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are – the beautiful and the flawed – and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny’s mom says, “Maybe ‘crazy’ isn’t so bad after all.” Sometimes crazy is just right.”

Finally, here’s my review of Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things!

This book was fantastic. I’m going to get that out there right away.

As the title states, it’s definitely a funny book. I don’t normally have visceral, physical reactions to books. It’s very rare that I cry while reading (the last time was Lily and the Octopus (review upcoming), but that was really a case of grief I was already sitting in and poor timing, and I can’t remember a time before that). I laugh out loud at books far less often (read: pretty much never). But I was laughing out loud at Furiously Happy. Throughout. Poolside in Cuba while people were eating a fancy à la carte meal nearby. In the hotel lobby while drunken revelers sang raucously beside me. On a bus full of half-asleep homeward-bound travelers at 12:30am. On my armchair, at home in my apartment, all by myself. Everywhere. This book is really funny.

The “horrible things” this book was about, however, were more important to me. And they were what really drew me to the book in the first place. Jenny Lawson has an anxiety disorder. She also has multiple sleep disorders, a personality disorder, rheumatoid arthritis, and goes through periods of clinical depression.

Lawson talks a lot in her book about having people on Twitter to talk to about her mental illnesses and the struggles she deals with in her daily life, and how it helps her to know that there are other people out there who feel like she does. That’s the way I felt reading this book. I have an anxiety disorder and a couple of chronic health conditions, and her struggles were so relatable. She also talked about several really great coping strategies that are definitely going to be helpful to me in the future. And I think most importantly, she consistently talked about her struggles with humour and optimism, even if they were dark and scary. It gave me an enormous sense of hope, and great ideas for how to help myself and others when things are not good.

Other Great Stuff

I loved the formatting of this book. It had relatively short chapters. The chapter titles were hilarious and were inevitably explained in gut-splittingly humourous fashion. Funny images were dispersed throughout. It also had really funny footnotes. I’m a sucker for a good footnote. All around, I loved the formatting of this book almost as much as the content.

Furiously Happy.

The book’s namesake, this is an idea that Lawson first came up with on her blog. She explains it best, and that explanation is quoted in the book synopsis I posted above. However, I do love how she elaborates on it:

“In fact, I’m starting a whole movement right now. The FURIOUSLY HAPPY movement. And it’s going to be awesome because first of all, we’re all going to be VEHEMENTLY happy, and secondly because it will freak the shit out of everyone that hates you because those assholes don’t want to see you even vaguely amused, much less furiously happy, and it will make their world turn a little sideways and will probably scare the shit out of them. Which will make you even more happy. Legitimately. Then the world tips in our favor. Us: 1. Assholes: 8,000,000. That score doesn’t look as satisfying as it should because they have a bit of a head start. Except you know what? Fuck that. We’re starting from scratch. Us: 1. Assholes: 0.”

Theoretically I love this idea, and I think that the amount of laughing I did at this book suggests that my body loves it just as much as my mind does. There are many things I’m going to take away from this book, but I think I’m most excited about trying to bring the “furiously happy” mindset into my life.

Overall, 5/5 stars for Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things.

I highly recommend this book, both for those suffering from mental illness(es) and everyone else in the world, because everyone is touched by mental illness, even if not directly. And it’s just a really funny book that will brighten anyone’s day, whether you connect with the subject on a personal level or not. Guaranteed.

(Furiously) Happy reading!

– Paperback Patronus