When Books Hurt Your Feelings

When you're already on the fence about a piece of literature you're engaged in, it can come as quite a shock when that book somehow manages to damage a piece of your psyche so hard that you're STILL thinking about it the next day.

Truth be told, I cried myself to sleep last night. Tim was already long asleep by the time this embarrassing scene went down, and thankfully, too. Much like the time he walked in on me sobbing to the end of "Marley and Me" (a movie I had previously sworn never to subject myself to), and cried, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO YOURSELF?!" while (unsuccessfully) trying not to laugh at the masochistic heap of crying wife he'd cheerfully left only a few hours before, I couldn't even begin to explain this sudden and horrid onset of emotion.

But what I can tell you is the one thing those two moments had in common - they were both about a dog.

I've never felt more betrayed by a book. Betrayed by a protagonist who, up until then, had been likeable enough. Betrayed by a protagonist who, upon falling in love with a man she'd only just met, abandoned her only "family" - Weeds, the dog - to fend for himself. It was sweetly written - she would visit him every day. She would continue to care for him in secret, because (for some reason I have yet to read) this man doesn't allow dogs in his life. But, it doesn't change the fact that she LEFT this dog. And there is no way to make a dog understand why he'd been neglected. It's the teddy bear at the end of A.I. It's Harry and the Hendersons. It's that terrifying episode of MacGyver where the petri dish of culture gets spilled and kills the lady scientist's adorable little collie. (And the lady, too, but WHO CARES?! SHE WAS CONSUMED BY HER DESIRE FOR SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY!!!)

You brought this upon yourself, Dr. Sandra Millhouse!

I dropped that book like it was fire in my hands. And I've been terrified to pick it up since. Because I know there's going to be more about this dog. And it's going to hurt my feelings. This overreaching, self-indulgent novel full of psycho-babble and meandering modernism that I can't even decide if I like IS ACTIVELY HURTING MY FEELINGS. AND I DON'T CARE FOR IT.

It might be time to "Little Women" this thing.

*Books are neat, aren't they? :)
**The book is Iodine - a novel by Haven Kimmel. Though truly one of my favorite authors, this particular book is a bizarre departure, and one I probably couldn't recommend to anyone not already heartily basking in her literary grandeur. (Or to anyone who pointedly overreacts to fictional dog abandonment.)