An intense and inspirational collection of fiction/nonfiction by young, lost talent
I first picked up this book because the girl on the cover had a really nice coat on. I fell in love with this book because the girl on the cover has the most beautiful yet tragic story. Everyone should read this book because the girl on the cover can somehow fit the collective emotions of the earth’s 20-something population inside a few printed pages.
Marina Keegan had one of the most promising modern literary careers ahead of her when she passed away at 22, five short days after her graduation from Yale University, summa cum laude, and mere weeks from when she would begin her new job at the New Yorker. In her young life, Keegan had accomplished more than most could hope to at the end of a long and illustrious career, with internships at the Paris Review and the New Yorker, a research assistantship with famed literary critic Harold Bloom, and an essay published in the New York Times.
The Opposite of Loneliness is a collection of Keegan’s work, fiction and non-fiction, published and un-published. Nine works of fiction make up the first half of the book, and each of these works keeps you on your toes; the next story couldn’t be more different than the last or further from what you were expecting. From “The Emerald City,” a Baghdad soldier’s love story told in one-sided emails, to “Cold Pastoral,” a lamentation on how to deal with the guy-you-were-hooking-up-with’s ex-girlfriend when he suddenly dies, Keegan reached deep into the delves of humanity and pulled out a crumpled, dusty emotion, long forgotten.
Keegan reached deep into the delves of humanity and pulled out a crumpled, dusty emotion, long forgotten.
Keegan’s non-fictive prose is equally striking; “Stability in Motion,” her poetic reminiscence on her first car, artfully captures the process of growing up within the walls and windows of a 1990 Toyota Camry, while “Even Artichokes Have Doubts” confronts the number of recent graduates who enter the ever-ambiguous “consulting” field.
Perhaps the most important piece within the work is the one from which it takes its name. “The Opposite of Loneliness,” Keegan’s final essay for the Yale Daily News, neatly ties up the emotions of every person on the cusp of change and places it, neatly wrapped, into a mere two pages.
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything,” she wrote. “We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
If you read only one book this semester – if you perhaps never even crack the spine of any of your assigned readings – make it this one.
