I saw an article online publicizing the release of The Opposite of Loneliness last month. After reading the story and her essay in the Yale Daily News, I immediately ordered the book. Why? Because Marina's story is heart-breaking and I loved her writing style. Needless to say, I devoured this book.
Marina wrote an essay titled The Opposite of Loneliness shortly before Yale's commencement in 2012. A few days after graduation, she died in a car accident. Her boyfriend had fallen asleep at the wheel (he survived). Marina was starting to make a name for herself in the writing world, as she had published essays in the New York Times and was about to start a job at the New Yorker.
It took a little while, but one of her professors and her parents put together a collection of essays and short stories she wrote. They aptly named the book The Opposite of Loneliness. The first nine are fiction and the last eight are non-fiction. There are a wide range of stories - a boyfriend passing away, a man in Afghanistan, a blind person, saving whales, saving the world, business cards. You are sure to get goosebumps and have the hair on your arms stick up multiple times.
Sometimes you can tell Marina was only 22 (or younger) when she wrote these essays and stories. Other times you feel like you are reading an experienced author. I feel like nobody writes short stories anymore. With a good writing style and concise plot, they can be wonderful to read. If Marina was still alive, her work might not have been published in a book so soon. But eventually, it would have been. Her death makes the essays and stories that much more meaningful.
My rating for The Opposite of Loneliness: 5 stars out of 5. Get it here!
Quotes from The Opposite of Loneliness:
"Do you wanna leave soon? No, I want enough time to be in love with everything... And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short." ~ Bygones
"It became clear very quickly that I'd underestimated how much I liked him. Not him, perhaps, but the fact that I had someone on the other end of an invisible line. Someone to update and get updates from, to inform of a comic discovery, to imagine while dancing in a lonely basement, and to return to, finally, when the music stopped." ~ Cold Pastoral
"Once, when Sam was at school, he'd texted me that he couldn't talk because his roommates were sleeping. Smiling to myself, I'd called him anyway - speaking one-way for a while eight minutes. This is what happened today. This is how I'm feeling. This is why I love you." ~ Winter Break
"I miss dreaming forwards. I dream backwards now. You won't believe how backwards you'll dream someday. I dream of the past, of things that could have happened, or should have happened or never happened. You dream of the future. You're so young." ~ Anna (a woman in her 60s, speaking to a man in his 20s) in Reading Aloud
"I read somewhere that radio waves just keep traveling outward, flying into the universe with eternal vibrations. Sometime before I die I think I'll find a microphone and climb to the top of a radio tower. I'll take a deep breath and close my eyes because it will start to rain right when I reach the top. Hello, I'll say to outer space, this is my card." ~ Song for the Special
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