A review by claudias19
The Secret Life of Objects by Dawn Raffel

4.0

This book was such an easy read and such a meaningful read. As I do with any book, I read the reviews after reading, and was kinda surprised to see a lot of negative reviews. The most common complaint was none of the objects connected to each other, and to those people, I don’t think you were thinking when you were thinking at all while reading. The whole point is that these objects that don’t SEEM to relate, all have meaning and relationships to the author and to each other. My favorite chapters were series of the teacup, rose colored glasses, soap, and seconds. All seemingly random objects, connected by the idea of fading relationships, lifelong friends and friends she only knew for three days, all still having meaningful impacts on her. The author seamlessly jumps through time, starting almost chronologically in this series of chapters from college, to graduation, a fun foreign trip before settling down, and her first years as a mother. Each chapter starts in this chronology and later skips through time, to her present day or years later. If you think the objects don’t have a connection, you weren’t paying attention. I loved this book, it’s one of those books I had to read for class and dreaded because I hate being forced to read, but ended up loving because it was so powerful. People were super mean in their reviews so I’m gonna to be mean in return: you’re fucking stupid and need to go back to elementary school if you think there’s no relationships between the books. Super fun read if you have at least 5 brain cells, apparently.