Have you Met Sally

I was worried I was going to finish this book and that it was going to end up being super overhyped. And yet here I am having finished and almost cried- and I’m not an emotional reader. I didn’t know what to expect. And yet I was drawn in by how domestic it was. Besides so many of them being rich, it was such slow life with more realistic struggles. I found myself encapsulated by Jude and his struggles and his relationship with Willem. I honestly didn’t expect them to get together. Or for Jude to agree. I just wish that Jude displayed more thoughts of admiration for Willem besides needing him. But then again everyone perceives love differently.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book surrounded in so much love for a single character. Until he got irrationally angry, I felt like I could read about Jude forever and ever, he was just a never ending vessel of emotions and stories and actions. So many hardships. He overcame so much and lived through so much and really reopened my eyes to mental health and childhood trauma. Like every other character of the story I wish that he could have truly seen how others see him and how much they love him. But yet I also understand the development of the brain and how what you struggle with as a child never really goes away.

The ability to hold onto friendships provided me with an optimism I hope I’m able to develop as I continue to get older. Never have I been able to understand the lengths of friendship, unless it is just the bond of those who struggle to develop themselves together. This is the most pure form of friendships, and it was so sad that it all had to end the very way that it did.

Malcolm and Willem’s deaths shocked me the most. I had gone through the first few sections of the book with the expectation of Jude dying eventually, but especially not after Willem. It just raises the question of why does life end for the good people rather than the ones who crave to escape? There was so much more I wanted for Jude and Willem, so much more life and development and happiness. At least Malcolm was able to stay with Sophie to the very end.

I feel like I’m so caught up in the ending of the book that I’m disregarding a lot of the build up that existed, like Jude’s relationships with Harold and Julia and Andy. Or the entirety of JB’s career and the rocky path of their friendship. I’ve focused so much on Jude and Willem so that even the chapters that are Harold writing to Willem, all I thought of was the relationship between Willem and Jude. But Harold’s first personal POV chapter, it took me a long time to piece it together. And after he died it made so much more sense. It was just sad that Harold and Julia and JB had to outlive them all. For a short part I had hoped that that would not be the case.

A part of me was surprised that JB’s career had gone the way it had. I didn’t expect him to keep making pictures of Jude to the very end. It was as though Jude was the love of both JB and Willem’s lives. Just that it was Willem who got Jude. I do think that in another life it could have been JB. I was surprised he actually kissed him in his grief, yet JB was loyal until the very end.

I’ve spent some time scrolling through Goodreads and this is always where I feel caught up and sometimes second guessing how I review books. A lot of comments were talking about a lack of history and ablism. Although I can’t really speak nor have I really done research into ablism, I’ve been taking at least Jude’s thoughts and comments at face value. I can understand that it can be hard to process the timeline of losing one’s ability to be an abled person and be in denial even when it’s too late. This isn’t supposed to be a perfect world in which the acceptance is easy. But on the account of a lack of history, isn’t it nice? The world seems to be constantly caught up in politics, and not having these events dictate what happens leaves so much more space for other things.

I don’t think this book is supposed to be an easy read. The triggers in this book are real and the events are painful. This book was a good reminder to me that not everything has a happy ending to it. We are surrounded by people who are suffering and the constant feeling of failure in this fast moving world regardless of success. There can always be more to be achieved, yet being held back by unresolved trauma that in some people, may not be fixable, no matter how hard they try.