Perfection

"Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs."
Richard Papin
from the "Secret History" by Donna Tartt

I will never, ever get over this book.
Listen to Donna Tartt read the prologue and part of the first chapter of her book here and feel the perfection. Listen to her at home, loud in the speakerphones and feel her eerie voice fill the space around you. Close your eyes and imagine that this is your dead grandmother reading you your favourite ghost story. And then pick up the book and read it again and again and again.

How I love going back to that book, how much comfort I get is unbelievable. I don't know why exactly though, I never did. Is it because its characters, I know them so well, make me feel like being in the company of friends? Why does a story of deception and immorality give me so much pleasure and comfort. I don't know, I think I never will.

On a second thought, maybe it is because this book satisfies, perfectly I must add, my morbid longing for the picturesque.