This is not an essay or a book review. Thus is a love story. I fell in love with writing, and then I stopped. I’m trying to figure out what happened, and whether I can fall in love again.
- Oliver Lol has written an extraordinary piece of work, a beautifully written bio/essay in which he totally opens himself to the reader. He ranges widely across all sorts of topics: girlfriends, drugs, sex, pain, hope, work and love, creating a rich tapestry of life’s deepest challenges, and the simple everyday stuff that binds it all together. At its heart is always love, for his parents, his wider family, and his friends. His deep relationship with Maria and its sad ending is central.
- The book is so moving and profound and its radical honesty is breathtaking. He describes the awful pain of his chronic migraines and headaches, jaw pain and back pain. He was utterly unable to write, read, or even look at a screen for months at a time. He couldn't even fill in a form or write his own name.
- He lands a job as a train driver/guard on the Sydney rail network and it grounds him in the everyday. He particularly enjoys the blokey conversations with his workmates, and the ability to occasionally sprinkle his announcements to passengers with a delightful comic touch.
In the beginning I resisted, but later I grew to love the repetitive rituals that became everyday life: swiping in, filling out the timesheets, blowing whistles, making announcements, opening and closing doors, waking at two or three or four in the morning, watching the sun come up over Waterfall, Penrith or Hornsby. It was, at the right hours and in certain lights, romantic, the way writing or literature or movies or the fictions inside my head had once promised to be.
… if you’re really listening, the trains will tell their own stories. They’ll tell you about a boy who had a migraine and how he nearly took his life once, but then they’ll say: that’s nothing special - look at us all together; there are millions of people, and they’re all just like you.
- He visited many doctors, specialists, psychologists and 'healers', but none of them were of any use. Until he found one at the end who really understood. He needed to embrace the power of forgiveness, of others and himself. The body and the spirit connect. They are one.
...because sometimes from the wreckage the wounded crawl, they stand up, they sing.
- Mol's prose is so entrancing that I could quote so many passages. Instead buy this book and read and re-read it. It will become a classic in the genre.
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