/lit/ - Literature

>At its climax, Ellisia Parker’s Silent Swan is presented as a tale of romance between two people in the grips of serious drug addiction. This aspect of the novel is what has attracted a worldwide audience of female readers, women who applaud the uncanny courage and strength in the face of hardship by Sasha, the book’s protagonist. Yet the novel as a whole rejects love and its revered status in society— this can be seen from the opening lines of the book, where Sasha admits to the reader that “The feeling junk brings takes precedent” (Parker, 1). During Sasha’s first meeting with Hayden, her drug dependant equal she mocks his apparently honest desire for her, saying to herself “his heart is a funny little device” (Parker, 29). By the end of the novel it is revealed that Sasha’s choice to become dependant on heroin was that, her own informed choice, and not the result of any hardships or societal pressures; it is affirmations like this which mark Parker’s outright rejection of love, relationships, romance, and love in general.

Feels like I’m writing a Borges story desu