ℝ 𝔼 𝕍 𝕀 𝔼 𝕎
by Richard Matheson
4/5 stars
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You know when a story just hits you in the deep, tender part of your heart? When you relate with a character, feel for them so genuinely, that you experience everything with them as they experience it in the book?
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This is that book for me.
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Actually, I first fell in love with 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘔𝘢𝘺 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘦 when I watched the movie adaptation years and years ago. I remember being very young—under ten—and feeling such a surge of emotion for this story that I couldn’t explain. I just loved it.
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Which is interesting, now that I think of it, because this is a depressing, somewhat dark story. I guess I’ve always had a streak of melancholy, even back then.
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This is a story about Chris. And Annie. Or wait, more like Chris and His Annie. No separation between the two. Because one cannot be without the other; they’re so beautiful in love, so genuinely connected, that life is grey and colorless without the other near.
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Even Heaven is hard to enjoy when one is separated from the other.
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But that’s exactly what happens. In one tragic accident, their lives are changed—and Chris finds himself separated from Ann by death. Though he is the one that has passed through the veil of life into limbo, he cannot make himself pass on. He can’t just leave his Annie, not when he feels her grief so palpably, even through their veil of separation.
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And so begins Chris’s afterlife: he will do anything to remain with the love of his life, even if that means moving Heaven (or Hell) for her.
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This is less a review than it is a suggestion. Read this book or watch this movie if you’re moved by endless love, by romance that transcends everything—even death.
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Now I’m going to go watch the movie and cry some more.
Pages and pages,
Hogan