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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Four stars, because I couldn't fathom the whole meaning of some of its stories. I understood they were deep but maybe one needs to graduate to a certain level of EQ to understand stories like this. At first, till 2 or 3 stories, I felt that these stories were obscure. But then I read some stories which went very deep, you know, the kind of stories where the characters do something but it means something else entirely! I reread the earlier stories and I let them seep in. They started making sense. I felt the utter incompatibility about feeling and sensing deepest of the emotions. What a fool I was, feeling superior after reading some books that I understood human emotions and mind. Raymond Carver was a genius who understood darkness and loneliness. Don't get fooled by the title of the book. It's not about just love, it's about other things which we try to ignore which come with love, like insecurity, celestial loneliness, feeling that no one will really understand you, jealousy, boredom, acceptance of the things the way they are and death of romance. Time does that to love. There are great philosophies underlying in the book, not the kind which you use to enhance your happiness, but the kind which makes you put away the veil that society advises you to put on dark issues. Mind you, that veil is necessary to go through life without being constantly depressed and should be encouraged in my view, but not without understanding what lies below, in the dark, lonely alleys of the mind.
I still haven't understood some stories fully. It's like knowing someone is there but not knowing who. I'll keep rereading till I feel I have understood them at least a little.
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