Severed Heads and Broken Hearts – Different

Its weird to see how a book has two different titles. I got it from Amazon because of the funny title ‘Severed Heads and Broken Hearts‘, thinking what kind of title is that and to see if it really lives up to the reviews. But in Goodreads, it is called ‘The Beginning of Everything‘. And I completed it in a day (well, it did take away my sleep and I am walking like a zombie today, but whatever).

Spoiler Alert (No way I can talk about this book without saying anything about the story)

The story starts with (one of ) the quote

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

How very true!!!!! The story is about Ezra Faulkner, high school jock with the trophy girlfriend and has a very cool image. He lost a friend when his friend held a severed head in his hands during a Disney ride. Scary, yes, but that also was the beginning of things he started losing aka a very good friendship. And then one day , after a pool party, when he breaks up with his girlfriend (she cheats on him) life changes for him forever when his vehicle is hit by another and he ends up broken, literally, ending his career in sports and permanently with a cane. But that doesn’t mean this story is about a broken boy who finds his way out through his depressive phase. No, it isn’t dystopian. Its not even utopian. Its more realistic. Where the boy who is a nice guy but a little bit distorted trying to be part of a group so that he could feel that did belong , now feels like he is the outsider and is trying to find a way to fix his life after the accident. There enters the girl Cassidy, all funny looking in boy’s dresses, totally trying to be non-existent but somehow making a huge impact on Ezra. Its not love at first sight, no sparks, no highly intense chemical vapors bubbling from that pipette. But there is an underlying attraction for Ezra at least after getting to know Cassidy for a short period of time. He becomes friends with his old friend Toby (the boy who caught the severed head) and his gang who are the nerdy folks. He is glad to be where he is right then, being the person he actually is and not some masked version of who everyone expects him to be. He is also surprised that people are able to accept him even with his injury, which is slightly disconcerting for him. Easy if people mock you and call you names and hurt you, but when they are encouraging there is no way he can use it against them and feel good about it so that he doesn’t feel bad for himself naa. 

When things seem to go well for him, with the school and its usual drama that accompanies the young age, he starts to fall in love with Cassidy and believes that it is reciprocated (yes, it is). He is truly different and happy with her and cherishes his times with her. But during the homecoming dance day she breaks up with him without telling him the real reason, which leaves him confounded. He doesn’t go behind her begging her or anything like that. She is absent for a while and then when she comes back to school, even though he wants to know what happened he accepts for what it was until he feels that she did it on purpose and there is something missing. Finally when he finds that out and still wants to be with her, she is not able to give that to him. And he is not ready to get her to do that for him. Because he feels that she has to let go on her own. That is how they end up with broken hearts at the end and even though life goes on for them, he realizes that their times helped him speed up his process of recognizing himself and that it is solely upto him to decide on how to live rather than exist.

It was a totally different take on a young adult fiction, especially with a protagonist who has a life time injury. Its a romance angle too, but it is mostly a realistic fiction, where things are as they would be in normal life, or at least more or less like that. No crying their heart outs, no unnecessary drama, simple realizations. I really really like it. Here are some quotes which I earmarked.

I still think that everyone’s life, no matter how unremarkable, has a singular tragic encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. That moment is the catalyst— the first step in the equation. But knowing the first step will get you nowhere— it’s what comes after that determines the result.

If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But that’s crap, because better isn’t quantifiable.

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

It was a very well written and interesting read.