BOOK REVIEW: THE INEXPLICABLE LOGIC OF MY LIFE

Life-College-Friendship-Family-Relationships-Love-Living

Author: Benjamin Alire Saenz

Genre: YA Contemporary

Page Count: 469 pages

Trigger Warnings: r@pe, death, drugs and alcohol, abusive families, homophobia

“When is the right time for anything? Who knows? Living is an art, not a science.”

“Don't ever underestimate the people who love you.”

When Salvador faces the daunting task of going to college, he must wonder about who he is, and who he wants to become. With the habit of taking his fists out on anyone and surviving through many losses — for his friends, for his family, he must learn to spot a lighted path through the darkness of grief. When Sam, his best friend, faces appalling accident and a tragic loss, he must learn to care for her and be gentle with her in a way he's never before. This strenuous build-up of grief and lamentation only grows through the book, where not only he and Sam face a series of crusades -- but his father, and Frito, another friend of his, do. Salvador must learn to fight this inner battle and strive for himself in this pitied pit of affliction, only to drag his friends and family out of it.

This books carries a morbid weight that drains your hands into the grievances of your heart -- it is unforgivingly unforgettable. There is no greater story about finding oneself, where Benjamin Alire Saenz does not write about one character, but rather multitudes of them; a plethora of specimen trying to find how they fit together. It drains like sand through your fingers, stringent, the reminisce of their falling in the dips between your fingers; this book remains nothing short of powerful, impactful, and of unearthing nostalgia.

"That’s the way it was when you loved someone. You took them everywhere you went—​whether they were alive or not."

Benjamin Alire Saenz writes such diversity in character, not only in ethnicity, but rather in their personas to only have them build a relationship never seen before — the dynamics of two waves crashing together only to conjoin in a storm of burrowed anger, burrowed grief. Salvador, "Sammy," is a character of which lives through a continuous change within his life, a fleeting scurry of life you can never quite catch up to. Only through senior year, he experiences a significant change in his mindset, in his thinking — change, change is that inevitable aspect of life, the deterring factor in how you lived. He transformed himself from the fruitless, angered person he proved to be at the beginning of senior year, to someone sure of himself, sure of where he wants to be and where he wants to go. This character, the persona of him remains locked within the diligence of grief — grief is a syndrome of which outworks anyone. When Salvador brings out his fists, punchlines grouped together in the entire book, we see his coping mechanism, how he trusts himself -- it was rather unsettling, watching this rapid change to adjust, and I believe change is something that has an uphill build-up, never is it something that happens in the flick of a light. Where Salvador became known for punching, for this randomized act of violence, there was no continuous build-up, it remained out of place. When his father, Vincent, gets involved in Salvador's heinous activities through school, it is known that he is angered, the pit of a peach encased in a roughened darkness. As someone to advocate the use of words rather than fists, Vincent comes into a fine cased concern for his son, along with Salvador's friends and family -- they had never seen a sort of multitude in him before. Here, we only unearth more of Vincent -- a painter known to upstand as a wise father, as a father with the most poetic and vaguely insinuate answers. Though it is seen that his character follows that of a stereotype, Vinent does not always stay attuned to this such character, with the downfalls in his life, the struggles down this flight we call "living." Only to offer to the plethora of change, we see that Salvador cares for Vincent, through of which he notices his father's constant downfalls, the change that revels in him. Where Vincent always learned to take action only in reason for Salvador, never for his own happiness nor comfort, he realizes that he missed on many unconceivable opportunities -- a fruit fly stuck in a jar with an opening. He must learn to put his son, as well as Sam and Frito level to his comfort zone in such a way he must never continue living this unfulfilled life.

The plot, through the shadows of which the characters leave, only proves to be disdainful for the fact that it changed much too rapidly - the blink of an eye accentuated with a newer plot twist. There was never time to fully grasp a concept, where everything happened in a series of set order -- where there would be quieter, more thought-provoking aspects of the novel, a quiet whispers through the echo of your mind, through times of spotlight grief, the streamline heaviness weighing down each characters. Without the tensioned build-up, all the events seemed randomized, plucked off foreign ground and dropped into the novel. Embedded, embellished in this constantly changing foreground, the novel seemed to be of turns that I could not understand before facing another binding plot point. The lack of tension seems to make each event out of place, and there was no real way to guess or unearth what might happen next -- the events seemed of random put together to make a book. This can be seen as Sam and Salvador go on a run, and find Frito -- though it is a major plot point, nothing drove home for the fact that I was still trying to process Sam's current living situation. The plot, thereof, was ever-changing, running from one plot point to another, there was no breather, no time to understand the rapid changes. Because of this, the actual story was left displaced in my mind, lodged in a memory, not a conscience. However, though the pacing made this book a struggle to read, the plot and story itself fluttered with many ideologies of family, grief, love, and life -- through the other flip side, of grief, of pain, of the void that is unknown. Benjamin Alire Saenz provides the most graceful interpretations for seemingly normal things -- for such as, laughing to be considered as, "whistling in the dark." His concept of life, the steady streamline with pitfalls and rises seems to be coveted in poets, the song of birds singing through his mind -- there has never been such a beautiful book than those that he writes.

"'Art isn't something I do, it's something I am."

A book of rose-covered grief such as those Benjamin Alire Saenz writes leaves an everlasting impact on me, a heart remained frail through the marred, strike-driven viewpoint of life this author has given us. There are many such things to learn from the imprint, colossus of this book -- such as the concept of change, the concept of change that remains with us through the discourse of life. Though the author brings frailty to this concept, it is seen that life is unrest without change, a turning wheel that tips over your living. Salvador, seen sure of who he is at the beginning of the novel, followed through the discourse of uncertainty, about his family, about his friends, about himself, is seen to end as a bettered, matured person -- this book taught me that change is vital through the course of life, and it's not always bad. Salvador, adopted by his father, Vincent, finds himself questioning of his mother and biological father -- foreign words that create him. As his habits, as his actions are ever-changing, he seems to think of the two, wondering whether this newer self comes from them. At the end of the book, he has seen to realize that such character of a person is influenced from those around them, is influenced from the decisions a person makes -- Salvador taught me that I am not my family, but rather my own person with my own decisions.

A lyrically beautiful novel of the interpretation of life as an entirety, Benjamin Alire Saenz writes with such dedication that the heartache leaves a calloused imprint through my skin.

Characters: 4/5

Plot: 3/5

Pacing: 1/5

Overall: 8/15

Recommended for fans of Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, and They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera.