Read : Exile Music Read : The Shadow Crosser Read : These Violent Delights Read : This Wont End Well Read : The Summer Deal Read : Oona Out of Order
A stylish stunningly precise and suspenseful meditation on adolescent desire female friendship and the female body that shimmers with rage wit and fierce longing—an audacious darkly observant and mordantly funny literary debut for fans of Emma Cline Ottessa Moshfegh and Jenny Offill.One year ago the person Olivia adores most in the world her father left home fA stylish stunningly precise and suspenseful meditation on adolescent desire female friendship and the female body that shimmers with rage wit and fierce longing—an audacious darkly observant and mordantly funny literary debut for fans of Emma Cline Ottessa Moshfegh and Jenny Offill.One year ago the person Olivia adores most in the world her father left home for a meditation retreat in the mountains and never returned. Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure and to escape her overbearing mother—a woman as grounded as her father is mercurial—Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center.Once there she enrolls in their summer program for troubled teens which Olivia refers to as “Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls”. Soon she finds herself drawn into the company of a close-knit trio of girls determined to transcend their circumstances by any means necessary. Led by the elusive and beautiful Serena and her aloof secretive acolytes Janet and Laurel the girls decide this is the summer they will finally achieve enlightenment—and learn to levitate to defy the weight of their bodies to experience ultimate lightness. But as desire and danger intertwine and Olivia comes ever closer to discovering what a body—and a girl—is capable of it becomes increasingly clear that this is an advanced and perilous practice and theres a chance not all of them will survive. Set over the course of one fateful summer that unfolds like a fever dream The Lightness juxtaposes fairy tales with quantum physics cognitive science with religious fervor and the passions and obsessions of youth with all of these to explore concepts as complex as faith and as simple as loving people—even though you dont and cant know them at all.(less)