the boy

It's grey outside. And misty. And chilly - the kind of weather that drives me inside and under blankets, armed with tea mugs and good books.

And because this is Georgia and Spring apparently doesn't come until May, I just finished a lovely little book called the boy by Lara Santoro. I read a review in Elle or Vogue or some place and to be honest, my expectations were kind of low. It's described as a story about a mother who feels trapped by her life and obligations and finds some fucked up sense of escape in her neighbor's twenty year old son. Most books like this are campy and propped up next to 50 Shades of Grey on the bookstore shelf - and don't even get me started on that shit show.

But I couldn't have been more wrong. While obviously the book's namesake plays a key role in the plot of the story, what propels the book forward is the main character Anna's relationship with her little daughter, Eva. That and the beautiful intricacy of Santoro's language:

"Summer carries with it both mutiny and slumber. The heat swallows hours, entire midsections of the day, but beneath all that, something always stirs, something always pulls, a kind of anarchy just below the skin, something to do with the body - what the body might want, what the body might get, should the heat hold."

Lara Santoro

It would be easy to hate Anna as a character. She's selfish and hedonistic, and those kind of flaws are painted neon when you have a child. She balks at Eva's constant, incessant, but innocent need, and she also simultaneously craves it. Her daughter dictates her life, and the boy (referred to by his name only like, 4 times throughout the whole book) is a vortex of want that distracts her from it.

Anna's a fully realized character, fucked up and bitter and an alcoholic. But there's an awareness in her that I relate to and empathize with. You want to follow her down this rabbit hole of bad decisions with a boy whose absence makes her feel "the first stirrings of melancholy...the cold crash of chemicals after a sudden spike."

I finished it in two days. It was the perfect companion to a cloudy day.

How do you guys battle the rain?

xo.