That hurt!

So, The Lost Language of Cranes is a subtly brutal little book. The summary on the dust jacket sort of hinted at that, but you don't really notice how truly brutal it is until you are well into it. To quickly summarize: it is the story of a middle-aged couple in New York and their adult son, beginning with a small crisis moment and then from there going into the ways that the secrets we keep from each other and the lies we tell each other/ourselves destroy us, and then destroy what we love.

Now, I realize that probably sounds bleak, but again, you don't really appreciate it until you get into the book. The novel ups the stakes by looking at the collateral damage of these lies, and sort of these cascading effects that then circle back. Part of what makes this so upsetting is that I also had terribly negative feelings about one of the characters and I hated what she did, but you can see how it all started with these brutal secrets.

I feel like lately I've read a lot of books about casual cruelty; that is, about the ways that we sort of hurt each other mostly out of fear and/or selfishness. Depressing. Doesn't help with my general outlook on humanity.