WONDER … a great read
Wonder…
“..no, no, it’s not all random, if it really were all random, the universe would abandon us altogether .and the universe doesn’t. It takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can’t see. Like with parents who adore you blindly, and a big sister who feels guilty for being human over you. And a little gravelly-voiced kid whose friends have left him to offer you. And even a pink haired girl who carries your picture in her wallet. Maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end, the universe takes care of all its birds. ”
well…
I would have wanted to do a review for this last read.. and of course, it is one of the best books I have ever read in my life. Actually, there is more, the last time a book made my tears shed in embarrassment was in the final chapter of Jubran’s broken wings. Of course, turkish soap operas make me always wrap my life and think, for God’s sake, it is always worse than my life in Turkish drama. BUT Wonder, made me spend what may be called a “washful” ( it is likely to be a newly invented word by me ) tears operation for a serious good count of hours. It wasn’t about a love story, a broken heart, an accident. Well, the dead of ‘Daisy’ the dog was the start of my tear bashing, but no, it wasn’t just there. It was the humanity. It is such an incredible journey in kindness. Yes, understanding. Kindness and courage in being you . in looking at what appears t one a human deformation, and learn from that deformed creation the perfection of a human kind.
I asked the bookseller to help me choose a book that will take me away from my philosophy mood and Ibn Rushd’s obsession when the young fellow grabbed Wonder to me and said: ‘ It’s full of humanity, I just finished .’
I always have this impression, when reading Arabic and not Arabic literature. In non-Arabic literature, No matter how rough the plot is, how hard the situation grows into more complications, the end is always somehow hopeful. Like reading Coelho’s 11 minutes, and Nawal Saadawi’s ‘woman at a point of 0.’ Kafka’s Amerika and Mohammad Shukri’s Al Khubz il have . An always worse dramatic end in our literature. But that is what it is. Our reality remains darker than our writing perhaps.
Anyway, in this ‘uplifting,’ ‘in-reaching’ novel, a great lesson of how Wonderous our ‘deformations’ are meant to be if we just look through. Not to the surface of the shallowness of a given creation. But to the miracle behind the deformed difficulty what may strike us as our worse nightmares, to realize that it is meant to be the wonder of our being … if we are just kind and courageous to be and face.