Book Reviews: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. & Aleph

I cannot speak highly enough of two of the books I read this summer.  Adelle Waldman's first novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.: A Novel,absolutely rocked my world.  I've never read a book that so perfectly captured what young adult relationships are like.  Nathaniel P. is a hotshot freelance writer living it up in NYC.  At the start of the novel he's already had quite the timeline of relationships, hookups, etc.  The book delves into his past romantic experiences while also watching how he navigates his current affairs.  I won't spoil the ending, but it was refreshing and left me feeling that we're all sort of Nathaniel P., wanting to be the moral compass in every interaction but oftentimes overlooking our own selfishness, our own ulterior motives, even our own flaws.  I think Waldman did an excellent job capturing the male psyche - the book could perhaps have been subtitled "What Your Boyfriends Are Thinking."  Though The Love Affairs was a tough act to follow, I think Paulo Coelho's strangely mystical/autobiographical novel Aleph really nailed it.  I am familiar with Coelho but this was the first book I'd ever read by him.  It was spectacular.  Definitely one of the strangest books I've ever picked up, it is the semi-autobiographical account of a married writer named Paulo who decides to ride the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan.  Following him on this journey - despite his best efforts to dissuade her - is a young woman named Hilal, a violinist.  As the story develops, it turns out that the narrator and Hilal have met before.  This is where the novel takes a sharp left into the fantastical: Paulo and Hilal have met in a past life, hundreds of years before, during the Spanish Inquisition.  Something happened then that was never resolved, and it is on this grueling, eerie, beautiful train ride that they together delve into their shared existence using something called the Aleph, "the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space...sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate."  This is a fascinating book, full of beautiful quotes on life and love, very philosophic while simultaneously containing a great deal of adventure.  I want to end with one of my favorite quotes from Aleph, which sums up the unique manner in which human relationships are perceived in this book - as being repeatedly broken and reassembled:

“The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return.” (p.13)