on the wrong side of the outside

Okay, to be honest, the first thing I thought when I got this book was “woah this is thin!” And by that I mean, like, novella thin and nothing like the you-know-who girls at school who think they’re supermodels. Then I thought “great, I can just get this over and done with quick”. Y’know, like when a boy asks you out and you go “what is it?” and he says “oh, just a soy milkshake” and you think “Guess it won’t take more than an hour. Fine.” You also think “why soy”? but ANYWAY back to the book….

I thought I wouldn’t like this novel. It involves a grown man, the death of his mother and politics and extenshia….existensionlis…*philosophy stuff* - none of the stuff I can relate to at all. But it’s a thin book, I was bored, so I thought I’d take it down to the grass by the lake and maybe the boys might catch me reading a smart book and think “wow, brains and hotness, ima ask her to the ball.”

After I finished this book I was like I LOVE THIS BOOK!

Firstly, I like how it has MOTHER ISSUES. We don’t get to meet Meursault’s mum, we find out about the same time as he does that she has died. And that’s when things start to go wrong. Everyone expects him to be all criez, but instead Meursault acts completely normal and that’s when ppl start to think he’s a bad person. Okay, I think I can safely say that everyone at one time or another has had a complex relationship with their mum and if something really horrible happens… well I can understand that ppl will act differently. Some ppl are good at expressing their feelings and some pple aren’t. Build a bridge. It doesn’t mean they don’t care. Meursault goes into some sort of post-traumatic stress and goes numb. So even tho everyone is like “what’s this dudes’ problem?”, I felt sorry for him.

Then there’s a MURDER. Meursault gets invited to some sort of adult schoolies at this place by the ocean and due to a really bad chain of events, ends up killing someone at the beach. So he has to go to jail and everyone tries to get him to criez some more and say he regretted it, but the dude is like, "I didn’t know the person, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind and it just happened – what do you want me to say?” I am not advocating murder, but it’s not like he’s an “evil” person. Some bad stuff went down and as a reader you are asked the Q – okay so this guy is a villain. Do you condemn him or do you think you can understand him better than that?

So that is, like, Existentialism (see I can spell it) which basically is “we exist, crap happens and sometimes there’s no meaning to life”. So like wow, I learnt something. It really got me thinking afterwards. Like how someone who just tells the truth gets blasted by society. I mean how many times have I told someone that their outfit looks awful (cos it does) and I get not thanks? In fact, everyone hates me for it. I thought Meursault was brave in the end for telling the truth. I felt bad for the dude that died, but I felt bad for Meursault too. He wasn’t going to say things that weren’t true for him.

I wanted to re-read some parts again and I even got annoyed when some boy from school interrupted me and I just thought “hey buddy, there’s more to life than wasting my time flirting with you”. So yeah, this one will bend your brain. I highly recommend. FB me if you read it too.