Scan barcode
shimmer's review
4.0
This story just nails the freneticism, exhilaration, terror, and rapture of a long distance relationship, or more specifically, of a rare in-the-flesh meeting between two people in such a relationship, when everything gets packed into a couple of days. The novel feels packed that way, too: a bit breathless, a bit chaotic, always focused on the details and paying attention but also aware of its own looming finalé. Bosworth doesn't just tell the story straight, but weaves in an ongoing awareness of the story being told — even as our romantic duo, David and Samantha, are trying to simply enjoy one another's company, and live in the rare moment they've been given, they're simultaneously mythologizing that moment and piling on more weight than it can possibly bear. In the way our most exciting, most self-consciously meaningful experiences are already stories we're going to tell even while we're still living them the first time, the inevitable retellings of these moments after-the-fact become inseparable from experience itself.
And though it makes me feel cynical just saying so, that's where I wish the story had gone further: there's such an intense focus on this brief, temporary reunion between lovers and all the stakes that implies, but I wanted more sense of the stakes of that self-mythologizing. Will David or Samantha or both of them blow all this up so huge in their heads that reality can't ever compare? Will they be blinded to who the other is by the impossible ideal they invent? What are they getting wrong in all this, and how is it going to matter later?
All of which seems unfair to ask, because that's not the story here; it's only an indication of my own preference for aftermath over origins. And, perhaps, my inclination to be horribly anti-romantic. Because Grease Stains feels pitch perfect and perfectly true, even to a reader who doesn't usually read to be reminded of what life is like but rather to wonder what else it might be. And the romantic, jubilant possibilities for David and Samantha won me over despite myself.
And though it makes me feel cynical just saying so, that's where I wish the story had gone further: there's such an intense focus on this brief, temporary reunion between lovers and all the stakes that implies, but I wanted more sense of the stakes of that self-mythologizing. Will David or Samantha or both of them blow all this up so huge in their heads that reality can't ever compare? Will they be blinded to who the other is by the impossible ideal they invent? What are they getting wrong in all this, and how is it going to matter later?
All of which seems unfair to ask, because that's not the story here; it's only an indication of my own preference for aftermath over origins. And, perhaps, my inclination to be horribly anti-romantic. Because Grease Stains feels pitch perfect and perfectly true, even to a reader who doesn't usually read to be reminded of what life is like but rather to wonder what else it might be. And the romantic, jubilant possibilities for David and Samantha won me over despite myself.
More...