[{"_1":2,"_54":-5,"_55":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_14":15},"root",{"_5":-5,"_6":7,"_12":13},"user","posthogBootstrap",{"_8":9,"_10":11},"distinctID","anonymous_J4beOjc2M32OYvBUtcjc0","featureFlags",{},"theme","light","routes/reviews",{"_16":17,"_52":53},"reviews",[18,40],{"_19":20,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_28":29,"_30":31,"_32":33,"_34":35,"_36":37,"_38":39},"slug","wuthering-heights-review","category","classic","tags",[25,26,27],"classic-literature","romance","gothic","published",true,"createdAt",["D",1710979200000],"title","Wuthering Heights - Inseparable Within, Impossible Without","titleHtml","Wuthering Heights - Inseparable Within, Impossible Without\n","excerpt","A novel about recognition, childhood wounds, and a love that is more than love","content","

\nThis is not love.
\nThis is a beast.

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\n\nEveryone talks about the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine.\n\nBut beneath that passion run dangerous waters:\nmurky, cold, deep.\n\nThe waters of the wound.\nOf childhood.\nOf cracks that never heal.\n\n
\n\nTwo people recognize each other.\n\nNot light,\nbut a familiar shadow.\n\n
\n\nHeathcliff is an abandoned child, stroked by a stranger's hand.\n\nCatherine is overlooked by her father's.\n\nHe forever feels unworthy.\n\nShe feels not enough.\n\nAnd this is where it all begins.\n\n
\n\nHeathcliff is more of a home to her than her father and brother.\n\nShe is earth to him:\nsolid, dark, inescapable.\n\nThey are made of the same thing.\n\nLike two halves of the same wound.\n\n
\n\nIn theory, they should be perfect for each other.\n\nBe each other's home.\n\nBe each other's salvation.\n\n
\n\nBut their wounds run deeper than their love can bear.\n\nTheir fears are stronger than their feelings.\n\nTheir self-deceptions are louder than their inner voice.\n\n
\n\nAnd so they think, and act, through them,\neven though they feel otherwise.\n\n
\n\nMany women sigh over Heathcliff.\n\nThey dream of him looking at them the way he looks at Catherine.\n\nThey dream of his raw, fierce devotion.\n\nBut they don't know what they're wishing for.\n\n
\n\nHeathcliff is a tornado of fire.\nAnd once you're caught in its eye,\nit's over.\n\n
\n\nHe is a blow.\n\nA fracture.\n\nA breaking point.\n\nFate with the face of a man.\n\n
\n\nAnd at the very heart of the tornado, it's quiet.\n\nYou can barely hear a melody\nof deep sensitivity,\nburied under rage and silence.\n\n
\n\nA thirst for tenderness.\n\nFor love.\n\nFor merging.\n\nFor Catherine.\n\n
\n\nCatherine is something more dangerous than Heathcliff:\nshe is a silence you don't know how to read.\n\nA child who learned to comfort herself.\n\nWhom no one ever chose first.\n\n
\n\nOn the outside, a lady and a mistress.\n\nOn the inside, a stubborn doubt\nshe doesn't dare name.\n\n
\n\nCatherine doesn't believe she deserves love unless she's Someone.\n\nAnd inside, she feels Not-quite.\n\n
\n\nHeathcliff believes she's ashamed of him.\n\nAnd that's why she marries Edgar.\n\nBut that's not it.\n\n
\n\nCatherine is ashamed of herself.\n\nAnd she's trying to escape it.\n\n
\n\nShe's not torn between two men,\nbut between two worlds within her:\n\none half yearns to be accepted,\n\nthe other, to be real.\n\nFree.\n\n
\n\nEdgar never reaches her.\n\nHe touches her skin.\n\nHeathcliff touches her scar.\n\n
\n\nTo him, she is poetry.\n\nTo her, he is spine.\n\n
\n\nWhat's between them is not obsession.\n\nNot passion.\n\nNot love.\n\n
\n\nIt's more than love.\n\n
\n\n_Recognition._\n\n
\n\nThey are drawn to each other\nwhere the world struck them hardest.\n\nWhere no one else has ever reached.\n\n
\n\nEvery step closer cuts.\n\nEvery step away hurts even more.\n\n
\n\nHe is fire, looking for somewhere to burn.\n\nShe is darkness, looking for someone to see her.\n\n
\n\nThey pass through love\nthe way you pass through a storm:\nwith blows, with stillness,\nwith escapes and returns.\n\n
\n\nAnd they both know:\nthis cannot be healed.\n\nCannot be chosen.\n\nIt simply is.\n\n
\n\nIn it, there is home.\n\nAnd ruin.\n\nAt the same time.\n\n
\n\nAnd after everything, what remains\nis what refuses to be destroyed.\n\nA hidden longing.\n\n
\n\n_What does she crave?_\n\n
\n\nTo lie in his arms,\nhushed, silenced within herself.\n\nTo press her lips to his skin,\nwhere the neck and collarbone meet.\n\nTo breathe lightly.\n\nSlowly.\n\nWarmly.\n\nRhythmically.\n\nTo close her eyes\nand sink into timelessness.\n\n
\n\n_And him?_\n\n
\n\nHe only wants this.",{"_19":41,"_21":42,"_23":43,"_28":29,"_30":47,"_32":48,"_34":49,"_36":50,"_38":51},"18-percent-gray-review","contemporary",[44,45,46],"bulgarian-literature","contemporary-fiction","existential",["D",1710892800000],"18% Gray - How to Crawl to New York with a Bag of Weed and No Arm","18% Gray - How to Crawl to New York with a Bag of Weed and No Arm\n","A novel about existential crisis, identity, and the search for oneself","

\n\"...if you haven't lived it, you won't understand.
\nAnd if you have lived it, why would you want to remember?\"

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\n\nI read _On the Road_ when I was 17.\n\nAsked my literature teacher for something philosophical. I wanted to understand Life, haha.\n\nShe said _The Name of the Rose_, I grabbed Kerouac.\nIt became my favorite book.\n\nI didn't understand life, but I felt it in full.\n\nThe way you can only feel it at 17.\n\n
\n\nNow, at 35, I read _18% Gray_.\n\nCried my eyes out.\n\nWhy?\n\nBecause the road, both Sal's and Zak's, turned out to be the same.\n\nA road you set out on to discover the world, only to find yourself lost.\n\n
\n\nPeople remember different things.\n\nStrange, random fragments.\n\nFaces trampled on the asphalt.\n\nScattered cigarette ash.\n\nA buzzing fly.\n\nA touch across the waist.\n\n
\n\nHe remembers the hands.\n\nThe palms. The fingers. The movements.\n\nHow they hold a glass of water or hand him a coin.\n\nSometimes they curl slightly from nervousness.\n\nAnd sometimes they just wait.\n\n
\n\nTo know someone's hands is to know what's hidden in them.\n\nAnd when those hands are gone?\n\nYou're left with one person you don't want to talk to.\n\nYourself.\n\n_(And that's when it gets scary.)_\n\n
\n\n_18% Gray_ is not a novel about love or its loss.\n\nIt's not a novel about a broken heart.\n\nThis is a novel about separation.\n\nA novel about being torn apart.\n\nIrreversible. Final.\n\n
\n\nStella is part of Zak.\n\nPerhaps the most tender and vulnerable part of his hidden self.\n\nWhen she leaves, he experiences it as if she's been ripped from him.\n\nAmputated.\n\nHe can no longer be the same.\n\nThe world can no longer be the same.\n\nAnd there's no one to give him back his arm.\n\n
\n\n_18% Gray_ is a novel about existential crisis.\n\nA crisis of meaning.\n\nA crisis of identity.\n\n_Who are you, if everything you defined yourself by is gone?_\n\n_Who are you and what would you do, if you're nobody?_\n\n
\n\nIf there's something to hold onto,\n\nit's the things you love.\n\nThe things that set you on fire.\n\nWhat you're passionate about.\n\nNot the people you love.\n\nThe things.\n\n
\n\nPhotography, drawing, writing, reading.\n\nMotorcycles, football.\n\nCooking ratatouille slowly.\n\nPlaying piano at night.\n\nSwimming at dawn.\n\n
\n\nThe people you love can't save you.\n\nThe things you love can't either.\n\n
\n\nThey won't save you.\n\n
\n\nBut they'll help you.\n\nThey'll pull you through.\n\nSomehow.\n\n
\n\nBecause they're the rope that keeps you tied to the world.\n\nAnd to yourself.\n\n
\n\nSometimes life doesn't offer you a hand. It smacks you with a wrench.\n\nThen you don't need to believe in the future.\n\nYou just need to get there.\n\n
\n\nAnd so Zak tries to crawl his way to New York.\n\nWhat he'll do after that doesn't really matter.\n\n
\n\nWhat matters is reaching the goal.\n\nWhole.\n\nOr in pieces, but stitched together.\n\n
\n\nA modern Frankenstein of the 21st century.\n\n
\n\nCrossing America, Zak takes photographs.\n\n
\n\nA white pickup by a mailbox.\n\nA man with three underage blondes.\n\nA homeless guy, sleeping with his head on cardboard boxes.\n\nA herd of cows, staring into the lens.\n\n
\n\nZak doesn't photograph because he's a photographer. He's been nobody for a while now.\n\nHe doesn't photograph for money. He's already a dealer.\n\nHe doesn't photograph to impress. There's no one left.\n\n
\n\nZak photographs.\n\n
\n\nJust photographs.\n\n
\n\nZak himself is a bit rough around the edges and somewhat awkward.\n\nInsecure, sometimes jealous, explosive, uncompromising.\n\nDeeply shaken.\n\n
\n\nFragile, but resilient.\n\nEnduring.\n\nLike a cannabis stalk: it bends, it sways, but it doesn't break.\n\n
\n\nAnd yet he's someone you could live with.\n\nLaugh with (I laughed out loud!),\n\ntravel with,\n\ngrieve with,\n\ndrink beer with\n\nand ask each other:\n\nMan, how the hell did we end up here?!\n\n
\n\nIn photography, there's a value: 18% gray.\n\nIt keeps the balance between light and darkness.\n\nA point of equilibrium.\n\nOf objectivity.\n\n
\n\nBut in the novel, it's something much more.\n\n
\n\nA place where you gather yourself,\n\nwhen you're on the edge of falling apart\n\nbetween the extremes of black and white.\n\n
\n\nNot a place to live.\n\nBut a point of temporary salvation.\n\n
\n\nIn the end, maybe this really isn't a novel about the road, love, or loss.\n\nMaybe it's a novel about that moment when you're left alone with your vulnerability.\n\nYou embrace it like a bag of marijuana\n\nand move forward with it.\n\n
\n\nNot because you know what to do.\n\nBut because you can't bear doing nothing.\n\n
\n\nNo promises, no expectations,\n\nbut with that 18% gray in your eyes,\n\nwhich will catch the sign on some rusty station:\n\n
\n\n_\"Life is beautiful.\"_\n\nScrawled.\n\nWith a ballpoint pen.\n\n
\n\nIt might be a lie.\n\nBut it does the job.","locale","en","actionData","errors"]