love

Someone once told me

~ fionareads ~ Leave a comment

Someone once told me

the moon is never wider

than your thumb

And it got me to thinking

of your thumbs and

how calloused and strong

the skin on your hands is

And how they wrap mine in

warmth and ownership

that I am grateful for

More than Aristotle was

grateful for physics

Someone once told me

that the stars tell stories

And I believe they do

So I gazed at the

blackening abyss

And saw a brightening,

a fiery milky way

Of memories

Of us

Someone once told me

that the world

is what you make it

And so I made it about us

About the way you love

me regardless of

flaws and anger

and sorrow

Someone once told me

you can read a person

through their eyes

And I realised

For the first time

That your eyes show me

a story you have written

in your mind of

hazel and green

that could rival Brontë

And a poem you wrote

that could vanquish Dante

About the fact that

we are one person

with more love

than any galaxy could hold

Someone once told me

the moon is never wider

than your thumb

And you’re somewhere

lost, away, too far

And I’m not sure

you can see me

So I think of you

there, wherever

there is and wonder

if we are the same

Or if we love and feel

and think and long

for one another

Differently but equally,

Strong and wholly

each other’s only

one

Mini Review – milk and honey by Rupi Kaur

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milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss and femininity. It is split into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose.

Rupi Kaur has achieved a mean feat with this book – it is the first and only book of poetry I have read from start to finish. It captivated me. It was effortless, unapologetic, strong, feminist and empowering.

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It is extremely difficult to try and review this book because every single poem is so personal, and tender, and significant in its own unique way. If you only read one book of poetry in your entire life, I urge you to read this one. It is such a sad, amazing and heartbreaking little book. It touches on all aspects and potential experiences of womanhood, through the form of a break-up – abuse, femininity, inner strength, insecurity, love, and grief.

‘You have sadness living in places sadness shouldn’t live.’

Rupi Kaur’s words are written for her – this is obvious in every line, every utterance, every chapter of the book, as her poetry develops and grows and heals and remembers. But it also manages to make you feel something powerful yourself – her stories are amazingly relateable, and her poetry is addictive, thought-provoking, and very, very personal.

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Book Review – Love Notes For Freddie

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Love Notes For Freddie by Eva Rice
Published: June 4th 2015 by Heron Books
Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
Pages: 385
Source: Goodreads

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Marnie FitzPatrick is a reclusive sixth-former from Hertfordshire with a dysfunctional family, a penchant for Pythagoras’ Theorem and an addiction to doughnuts and gin. Julie Crewe is a disillusioned maths teacher who lives vicariously through the girls she teaches, yet who once danced barefoot through Central Park with a man called Jo she has never been able to forget.

This is the story of what happened in the summer of 1967, when the sun burned down on the roof of the Shredded Wheat factory, and a boy called Freddie Friday danced to the records he had stolen. This is about first love, and last love, and all the strange stuff in between. This is what happens when three people are bound together by something that can’t be calculated or explained by any equation.

I have read both The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets and The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp and absolutely fell in love with Eva Rice’s writing style. Her books are engaging, eccentric, fantastically vintage and spilling with original characters.

As expected, I adored Love Notes For Freddie. It was an engrossing, rich and heart-warming story about new love, the ghost of love, new dreams, and shattered dreams.

The chapters alternated between Marnie’s and Miss Crewe’s point of views. I loved the parallels between the two characters, and the fact that they both loved Freddie, but for different reasons, added an intriguing dynamic to the story. I was glad that we didn’t get to read Freddie’s point of view, as I feel he was essential only as a catalyst for Marnie’s and Miss Crewe’s personal development. Miss Crewe’s fascination with him particularly was magically progressive for the story, as you got to see into her past and how it shaped her into the person she is now.

Eva Rice has a unique narrative style that is gloriously detailed and almost filmic in its vivid description of emotions, people and places. She has the ability to write about a particular era with originality and authenticity, and she makes every moment of her novels feel entirely real. You fall head over heels in love with the characters she creates and are immediately drawn into the world that they live in.

I loved Marnie just as much as Tara and Penelope, but for different reasons. The author writes with an empathy that enables you to understand the character’s feelings and actions, and fill their shoes entirely, even if you do not agree with their decisions. I love how real the story felt. There are too many novels that end with ridiculously predictable endings, and happy endings for the sake of a happy ending, even if the story has to forsake its natural direction.

Eva Rice is not scared to write a story that does not end exactly the way the reader would like it to. Her stories are unpredictable, and this is an amazing thing. She writes books that you wish you could have written yourself. Love Notes For Freddie, I believe, teaches you to make the most of the present, and to not dwell on the past. The ending was important as it let you know that love, however heart-breaking and life-changing it might feel at the time, can end, and you can live past it; that sometimes, you have to let things go, in order for them to blossom.

I absolutely adored this book, just as much as the previous two novels, if not more. Love Notes For Freddie is fantastically vivid, heart-warming, rich and truthful. I loved every second of it, and the only thing I hated about it was that it ended. I can’t wait to see what Eva Rice will write next, because I know it will surpass all my expectations and be just as loveable and brilliantly written as this novel is.