Ten Thousand Saints – Part One
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
If you have not yet read Ten Thousand
Saints READ THIS AT YOUR PERIL! Thank
you x :D
I started reading Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson one week ago and I
have already finished Part One – Sad
Songs. I am not just saying this because I am a book lover who would read
anything that dropped into their lap and think it was wonderful, but this book
is truly brilliant. It is a coming-of-age novel, which is not something I would
normally pick up and read. But I was reading an article with Asa Butterfield,
and also on his twitter page, in which he mentioned he was in the film adaption
of this book. So I thought I’d give it a go!
Normally, I would pick up a
book and travel into a fantasy world, completely removed from our own. So
picking up this book, about Jude, Teddy, Eliza and Johnny set in Vermont and
New York in 1987/1988, drinking and getting high, was a world away from what I
am normally used to. Reading about Jude and Teddy’s ‘normal’ life of drink and
drugs and getting high was a new experience for me and throwing Eliza into the
mix just made it even more compelling. Even though I knew Teddy’s death was
coming I didn’t expect it to happen in the manner that it did, even though it
was very fitting, and Jude’s thought of ‘it could easily have been him lying
dead on the floor’ is a thought that I also had. How different would this story
be if Jude had died and Teddy had lived? Would Teddy, Eliza and Johnny have
ever really thought of him again?
I find Eliza’s predicament
fascinating and unique in the fiction world. Who would think of writing this?
And whilst I was reading it I found myself thinking, what would I do in her
situation? Who would I tell? I also love how protective Jude and Johnny are
towards Eliza after finding out that she is having Teddy’s baby. Like they are
both expectant fathers-to-be to this one unborn child, it is quite
heart-warming. Although Eliza heart and mind are fraught with confusion as she
develops feelings for the both of them – whilst having another’s child, even if
that person was Johnny’s brother and Jude’s best friend.
The one character I really
feel for so far in this novel though, is Jude. He always seems to be on the
back foot, especially when Eliza and Johnny decide, when the time comes to tell
Eliza’s mother, to say that the baby is Johnny’s, you can feel Jude’s heart
drop. Then when Johnny decides, on Eliza’s sixteenth birthday, that the best
thing that he can do to try and keep things authentic, it to ask Eliza to marry
him, you can feel Jude start to sink even further, even though he knows that
Johnny isn’t doing it because he loves her, is he? Even though the general feeling
to the reader by the latter stages of Part One is that Johnny isn’t as
interested in girls as we are initially lead to believe, they still go through
with the wedding (a Hindu wedding, which for some reason surprised me a bit)
and Jude drives the newly-weds off in his father’s old campervan.
And so commences Part Two – The Householders, which I am
most looking forward to reading. If it is as compelling reading as Part One, I
may have finished it by next week!
AngelClaireX
