I firmly believe that you relate to a book differently depending on how your life changes. Books take different shapes and meanings as an experience as your life unfolds. Depending on any given circumstance you may be going through, a work of writing reveals different parts of itself to you, or you see different aspects depending on what your life is forcing you to look for. Lang Leav’s Love & Misadventure is no exception.
My first encounter with this collection of poetry left me with a kaleidoscope of emotions. In a sense, I felt exponential loss at the fact that Leav could describe some of the most intense human conditions and yet I had not felt these things in my own life. While feeling loss when confronted with the pieces I could not relate to, I also felt astounding gratitude when I reached the pieces that seemed as if she had written them about me. Someone I once knew said to me, “One of the most underappreciated things in this life is to understand and be understood.” This book made me feel at ease because it seemed like someone else had not only been through something that I was also struggling with, but she was able to express what the experience meant in a way I had never achieved.
It is impossible for every single person to share the same opinion of any work of writing. Some people will vehemently attest to the “fact” that Love and & Misadventure is a poor collection of poetry. Others will fight to death in defence of what this book meant to them. I digress from either of these positions and choose to stand firmly in the middle. My opinion of this book was intertwined with my life experience and my feelings toward it have changed accordingly. Initially there were subjects I could not identify with and so they did not resound with me, but then there were other aspects that rung so true I was doubtful it had not been written solely with me in mind.
I am grateful to Lang Leav for her simple truth because the expression of that truth provided me a channel to expose my own. I believe books should be able to provide you with some piece of the world you did not have before reading it, or at the very least expose a piece of the world you did not see, and I thank Lang for doing that very thing for me.