Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18166936-the-strange-and-beautiful-sorrows-of-ava-lavender?ac=1
My rating: 5/5
Plot:
The story mainly follows the life of the Roux/Lavender family.We start off with the story of Emilienne Roux,Ava's grandmother.We learn about how the Roux family moved from France to the US and how their lives have been affected by that,the sorrows that followed and that would stay with Emilienne forever.Then,as the story progresses,the focus shifts from Emilienne's story to Viviane's,her daughter's,and the challenges that she has to face,simply to end up reaching the point where we finally learn about the narrator,Ava Lavender (and her twin brother Henry).Ava,like everyone in her family,was rather peculiar.She,however,was a lot stranger than even the others in her family and much more different from everyone else,as she had been born with wings.We learn the story of how she lived with them and what challanges life brought to her because of what made her different,how she had to deal with all of that and how her family and community were affected by her story as well.
Opinions:
Even before actually starting reading this book,I made the terrible mistake of creating insanely high expectations.I always try to avoid doing so,because I know that it usually makes me create this preconcieved idea of how the book should be and what I should expect and that's the first step in a recipe for disaster most of the times,because it only leads to not reaching those certain standards and I end up disappointed.
However,despite my insanely high expectations for this one,I was still shocked at how much I loved the book.It took me a while to get into it,as I was just getting back after a reading slump and the first 20 pages or so got me a little confused,but once I got the hang of it I could not put it down and had to finish it in one sitting.
First of all,the writing style is like nothing I've ever read before.Leslye Walton has such a unique way of telling stories,such an incredible way with words that it just gets you hooked.
The thing that I loved from the very first moment,was the way so many stories intertwined.Even though the three women are the main focus of the book,theirs were not the only stories we got to learn.We got to know about each of the Roux children and their parents,we learnt about Gabe and Jack,about the little girl who used to live in their house and her brother,this was just such a greatly done thing,because it could've turned out disastrously,considering how many stories there were,yet it all flowed naturally,in a way.
Secondly,the characters themselves were utterly fantastic.It's hard to even think about just one character that stands out because each has one thing or another that makes them so complex and brilliantly crafted.They all have such depth to them,their highs and lows,we get to learn something about every one of them and I found that so great,it helped shape the way that the book was understood so much.
Finally,I can't not mention how amazingly full of symbolism and metaphors it was.Maybe that wasn't the point,maybe this was one of those cases in which the writer simply wrote what they wanted to and we all start looking for symbols and metaphors and things that maybe weren't even suppossed to be there (although I think that is not the case,I wish to believe that all of these were intentional.I'm always one to look for metaphors,because that is what I somehow end up doing with my lif anyway,so I appreciated what was done through this book so much.The ending of the book itself,I found breathtaking.
I honestly loved this book so much and not in the simple 'oh,this was a cute read,let me get on with my life' sort of way,but in the 'this book makes me question my life choice and the world itself and keeps me awake in the middle of the night thinking about the meaning of life' sort of way.
( note : I literally finished the book sometime around 11:30pm and spent the next 2 hours thinking about the meaning of life )
This must've been the best read of the year so far (not that there's too much to compete with at this point) and it might be one of my favourite books of all time.
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