The Wrecking Ball

Hey! Here is my current location. I am sitting comfortably on my chair at the beach. I am seated close to the water and have just completely enjoying every moment. I am truly away. Although I have my phone, the Internet is turned off and it is just my books, my sketch pad and my creativity. Well, I have just finished reading a novel, three or so weeks ago after picking it up, and so, naturally, I am here to share my opinions, questions ad thoughts. The novel is called "The Wrecking Ball", and is written by Chrsitiana Spens, a student currently enrolling in the elite Cambridge university. As for a quick, necessary, overview: London born and raised tens are on the constant go, traveling and partying and raising hell in the swanky streets of Kensington, bringing their gold encrusted flasks and their dirty Chanel pearls with them. It is an easy read. The light drama, typical drug scene and sex craved teens make to run at living in the real world for the first time. While most of them fail, one, character, Alice, seems to come up as a winner in the end. Horribly mistaken as a nice girl, Alice learns from her experiences. Does the mean spirited girl become an sober angel in the end? Of course not. However, she does learn a thing or two. She learns to give in to the things she cannot control and to accept responsibility for the things she can. She learns to live out her questions, as Rilke advises us to do, and she grows.

For a simple book, I was certainly found delighted to hear some influential statements and ideas stated by the characters.
"You don't see the fuel in the lighter- only the flame." (Pg. 209)

"The only fiction is the silence, the blank spaces on pages where certain confessions are not told. That is also part of the freedom. In silence the despair is put on mute, strangled to insignificance. And yet silence has a habit of haunting one." (Pg. 209)

An interesting detail I noticed, that serves as the foundation of the thematic development, is the differences and the similarities between the two generations. The parents and their children, the young adults. The parents in the novel are portrayed as the stereotypical rich-unhappy people. The wife that cheats on the husband while he is away on a business trip. Little does the wife know that he has been gambling their fortune away. The parents are playing the role of the children. They act young and immature, make mistakes and fail to lean from them. On the opposite spectrum, the children are often shown to learn from their mistakes, giving hope for their future. Although the novel ends with the teens still young, the reader is asked whether or not they will grow up to follow in their parents footsteps as unhappy, depressed and drunk parents, who are often not present forces in their children's lives. Do they follow on their current path or do they create their own destinies, their own lives?
Perhaps this quote will answer those questions.
"I have been feeling dizzy for a few days and sick from the withdrawal, have been feeling a bit out of it, but the general clarity with which I hear life is surprisingly immediate and gives me a new sort of high: a creative high, a clean breath, a new start." (Page 226)

So, without revealing to much, I want to give a brief overview. The book is an easy read and is written in a way that the reader can put down the book and pick it up at a later time without much confusion. I would recommend this if you like a dramatic story with light drama and if you are in the mood for some high fashion.
Well, I am off to my next book and a cup of fresh raspberry tea. I am reading the novel, "She's Gone Country, by Jane Porter. I'll be sure to let you know how it is.
Enjoy your day- William