Stop. Leave me to my devices and go away. Just get off my back already, all right? You don’t know me, don’t know my situation. You don’t know the town I live in, the people I live with, the friends I own. Don’t hold me to your standards. Stop expecting the best from me. I’ve never been given the tools to be her. So let me alone. Life’s easy when nothing expects so little of you. Easy is what I … what I crave. Easy is what I do best. Let the world weep. What good could I possibly do them anyhow? Follow my lead and close your eyes. It’s effortless.
Stop asking about me. I’m okay with being no one, a nobody. I’m comfortable with this stagnant life.There’s nothing I stand to lose. I’ve taken no risks.
Life can’t be changed by simply doing nothing.
Can it?
I’m Lily Hahn and this is the story of how I went from a life of hollow nothing to a life of exhaustive agony and why I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
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A great story based on the 7 sins. Idle was quite the story that was entertaining and not what I was expecting.
Lily doesn’t have any drive in life, just going along until Salinger shows her she’s worth more.
An original storyline that was captivating.
Fisher Amelie writes these powerful, beautiful discourses on the human condition and with every one I feel another part of my heart and soul change, making me a more complete and compassionate person. Idle is, on the surface, a slow-burn romance, but in reality, it is so much more an account of a person realizing their full potential and striving to reach it.
IDLE worked up very slowly, but it was vital to Lily’s story. She’d been served nothing but disappointment and raw hostility, was never asked to be more than status quo. The care with which Salinger helped to guide her out from the expectations she’d been living down to was exactly what she needed. She wasn’t ready to see herself for what she was truly worth until she’d shed the skin of worthlessness she’d forced herself into years ago.
IDLE was equal parts devastating and healing. It was a microcosm of the human condition and showed, with stunning clarity, what can happen to a person when they live with total apathy as well as the soaring heights a human can achieve if they pull themselves out of that pit of despair and choose to strive for a goal. IDLE was shocking in the contrast it shined on the differences between people who believe they are stuck in a cycle thrust upon them by birth and those who know with a little effort there is more to life than a person could ever imagine, and how that mindset informs every second of their lives.
While this book was, by all accounts nearly perfect as is, I wish we would have got more chapters in Salinger’s head. We got to know little bits about him – surface details – but he seemed to be such a complex guy and, other than protecting Lily from herself, I’m not sure I know what motivated him, what his passion and drive were. I loved him, so much, he was exactly what Lily needed at precisely the right moment of her life, and getting to know him better, beyond his compassionate exterior, would have made IDLE perfection. There was also a little bit of a continuity issue with whether or not Salinger drank alcohol. Several times characters, including Salinger, state that he doesn’t drink and a reason is given, but there is one scene where Lily offers him a beer that he ostensibly left in her fridge.
Fisher Amelie has long impressed me with her words. She has this subtle, yet powerful ability to shed light on all the things we as humans try to shove into the darkest corner of the closet. She does it in such a beautiful way that there is no choice but to dig those atrocities out, examine them, and then commit to never letting those things go unchecked in your corner of the world. Her writing, when read with an open heart, has the ability to make the world more aware, one person at a time.