In adolescence, we all feel exceptional, special, we dream of a great future full of opportunities for the realization of talent, and then, closer to thirty, most people have a time of disappointment, the "death of a rock star" syndrome, when it turns out that either there is no talent, or the opportunity for its realization has not been found. What's next?
One path leads to envy of those who are more fortunate, a walk along the second makes you look for new options in order to feel fulfilled in this life, the third is humility, acceptance of yourself as you are and your life, even if it does not look at all like what was imagined decades ago.
The life of Julia Handler, the heroine of the novel "Exceptional" managed to absorb all three scenarios: the search for oneself was faced with envy of the success of others, quiet humility gave way to the discovery of new opportunities, new opportunities sometimes led to new disappointments, and sometimes gave quiet happiness to the realization that you are in your place.
"Exceptional" is a book about friendship, about life, about talents and their variations, about envy mixed with love. If reading "Little Life" you were disappointed by the deceptive annotation that promised a friendship story of four heroes, then go ahead to the "Exceptional", they will fix everything and finish what they did not receive.
The camp for creative teenagers "Forest Spirit" in the early seventies brought together six teenagers: the self-doubting modest Julia, the sweet son of the folk star John, the gifted animator Eaton, the dancer Katie, the notebook Ash and her brother, the charming, albeit arrogant handsome Goodman.
The motley company, in which representatives of various social classes turned out to be endowed with varying degrees of "exclusivity" and the opportunity to show this very "exclusivity", did not last so long in the original composition, the trouble that fell like snow on their heads cut off a couple of members of their group from the "exceptional", however, the backbone of the partnership carried its friendship through the years...
What Meg Vulitzer is driving at is clear from the first pages, many readers complain that a thick volume of "Exceptional" can be reduced to the phrase that in order to be happy, you don't have to be exceptional at all, and as soon as you accept yourself as you are, you can finally relax and stop looking back at those who are nearby and constantly cause envy.
Everything seems to be like that, but not quite: in fact, telling the story of a gang of "exceptional", Vulitzer touches on a hundred different topics, from child labor in the modern and even partially robotic world to psychotraumas that their owners have been grooming and cherishing for years, not giving themselves the opportunity to pass the problem or finally understand that they invented this trauma themselves, inspired by another book on popular psychology.
And even in the matter of talents and exclusivity, it goes much further, showing not only that, in general, it is quite possible to live normally without giftedness, but also completely different facets of this very giftedness (we are used to associating talent with something from the world of art or science, but isn't there, for example, gifted ultrasound specialists who just need to hold a sensor once to call a diagnosis, as if they see through you without a device?) or how its bearers can deal with their giftedness (while some work day and night to achieve a certain result, others achieve it on the fly, but they simply don't need it).
The familiar feeling of envy in books, as a rule, is something destructive and destructive, it is given to villains or those characters on whose example the author is ready to show us the moral fall in all its glory.
Vulitzer rejects this stereotype, her characters are jealous, admit it, but at the same time envious people continue to sympathize with the object of envy and remain loyal and good friends, and therefore the reader continues to sympathize with them, recalling cases from his life when envy kicked the door and settled in consciousness, not letting himself get out of his head.
I admit, I often envy, it's worth me opening Instagram, where my friends and acquaintances put up photos of the works of their hands, for me, a person who can't draw a straight line even with the help of a level, already sweating palms, and what culinary delights... choking on my Rollton!
Therefore, the feelings of Jules Handler are close and understandable to me, although I have never felt envy for someone else's well-being or even more so for my family. Seriously, how to live this life if the environment consists of talented and successful people, and you yourself are neither fish nor meat, a strong middle-class man without obvious talents? How do you come to terms with the fact that while you are barely mastering the school curriculum, your friends are discussing the "Tin Drum"? In my opinion, a megaactual question!
The topic of double standards raised in the "Exceptional" seemed quite interesting, when, being a public person, the creator defends some principles and views, and having descended from the creative heavens to the mortal earth, immediately begins to behave in exactly the opposite way.
We want to be tolerant, brave, honest, humane, generous - this is commendable, we always need to strive for the best, but our desires, alas, sometimes fall dead in an unequal battle with real life and unforeseen circumstances, and so a fighter for women's rights throws condemning remarks at a victim of sexual violence, when a person close to her becomes a rapist, who has no strength to turn away from during a difficult period, he will always be the most, whatever he did.
How many such cases are there when some celebrity acts as the face of the advertising company of a charitable foundation, and meanwhile his loved ones are living on a pension in some kind of mess and no one thinks about them?
"Exceptional" - from those books that are read in one gulp, literally swallowed and then digested for a long time, assimilating for weeks, or even months. And not because Vulitzer is clever and forces the reader to make efforts to understand her text, everything is just the opposite, simple and understandable, but because trying on what is described in your life, you pay attention to what used to remain somewhere on the periphery.
Of the minuses of the novel, I can only note its periodically flashing contrivance and implausibility, however, this applies only to the storylines associated with Jonah and Goodman (fake passport, Iceland, Maoists, the story with LSD - in my opinion, somehow too much), as well as a somewhat chopped-off, in my opinion, ending.
343.313 SRY