An Imperial Affliction written by Peter Van Houten is my favorite book. I've read it again and again and again. Peter Van Houten has a way of writing about what living with cancer is really like.
It's about a girl from California, Anna,who has a rare blood cancer. It's not a cancer book about it's about Anna's living her life with cancer. Anna wants to help others so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Caner Who Want to Cure Cholera.
My favorite quotes from this book are:
"As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man face the ocean:
"Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it,
rising up and rising down, taking everything with it."
"What's that?" Anna asked.
"Water," the Dutchman said. "Well, and time."
"The thing about Pain is. It demands to be felt."
"The rising sun too bright in her losing eyes."
Sometimes you read a book and if fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal. But Augustus is special so I shared it with him.
After he read it. He texted me four times.
You see AIA ends mid-sentence. I understood the story because Anna died or got too sick to write and this mid-sentence thing was supposed to reflect how life really ends and whatever, but there were characters other than Anna in the story, and it seemed unfair that I would never find out what happened to the. I mean, what happened to Anna's mom? Was the Dutch Tulip Man a con man? What happened to the hamster?? I really wish I could find out. I've tried writing letters to Peter Van Houten but I've never gotten back a response.
