I would kill for a spa week at this point haha. Though a 10-day cleanse I’m not sure I would be up for. I’m quite happy with my coffee and sugar addiction thank you very much, and if you ask my sister she will be quick to inform anyone that if they take me off sugar or caffeine that I am not a good person. However, if someone was handing me special smoothies I’d probably be just fine.
“Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty is extremely long. And yet, it actually wasn’t too long, you know how some novels drag on and on and you’re like, yeah you could have ended about a thousand pages sooner? This was not one of those novels. I loved how much personality she put into each of her characters, how even in their thoughts their personality shone. It was fascinating.
I also loved knowing so much about all of the characters except Marsha. How Marsha was kept a bit of an enigma not only from the other characters in the novel but from the readers themselves too. It made the whole novel more personable, like you were a person inside the resort as well.
The constant balance between hilarity and the actual serious nature of the issues everyone in the novel was working through was really poetic. It felt real. These were problems most of us live through every day. No not everyone wins the lottery or gets caught in an internet scam. But issues with money, issues in relationships, grief, our terrible self-image issues. These are things we all live through. None were taken lightly, and despite the very unconventional ways that Marsha went about it these people actually began to heal.
Was it the LSD or the silence? Perhaps a combination of the two. I’ve read in other books as well as experienced myself through meditation how profound silence can be. When you are completely silent and don’t interact with anyone you fall deeper into yourself. Could Marsha maybe have skipped her little LSD experiment and worked with her guests through the silence?
While that would have made the book far less hilarious, thinking about the silence has made me want to have more moments of silence in my own life. So often we are surrounded by noise. Right now writing this I know without a doubt that my neighbor is taking a shower, because even though I am alone in my apartment, a blissful quiet moment alone in my normally busy atmosphere, there is still noise. Noise that the silence is allowing me to notice. I can hear the shower next door, my fridge, the small tapping of my normally silent (at least that I can tell) keyboard keys.
I think this may be the biggest lesson the novel had, at least for me. That we need to tune into ourselves more. Not necessarily do LSD, I mean you do you but be safe please. For me it was that we need to have moments of silence. Silence where we aren’t connected to anything electronic, to social media and our phones. Silence where we aren’t distracting ourselves with books or games. Silence where we are simply interacting with the world around us and enjoying it. We need to take the time to chew thoroughly, savor the food that we eat. Take joy in the sunrise, in the breathes coming in and out of our bodies.
Yes I sound like a complete hippie. But if there is anything this year keeps pounding further and further into my head it is that we need to slow down. To enjoy, to savor, to cherish the life that we have.
“Nine Perfect Strangers” by Liane Moriarty
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nine_Perfect_Strangers/pOxWDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
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