BOOK REVIEW || Aristotle & Dante

BOOK REVIEW || Aristotle & Dante

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In my life, there is not one person that I know who has never judged a book by its cover.
Look at it. It's breath-taking.

Sometimes we have moments when we question ourselves. On who we are, on what is the point, on what makes us enthralled by the never ending secrets of the universe. There are people who we meet that give us hope or give us a purpose in life. And they help in solving the secrets that we must know and add more unsolvable queries in our mind. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe made me realize the sadness in not knowing who I am and the happiness of what true love and family can bring.
This story takes place in a neighborhood called El Paso and I'm not going to dig deep into the setting. The main point is that they live in a abundantly Mexican neighborhood. Aristotle (or Ari) is the voice of this novel. The narrator. Basically the book starts our during summer vacation when Ari goes to the community swimming pool and meets Dante.
Ari is an introvert. He does not try to entertain people with his thoughts and sadness. He doesn't know how to swim or dance or sing or be sensitive. He says he is not talented, which means he does not know his own capabilities. He likes being alone. Even when he met his only best friend, Dante, he still didn't mind being alone. Dante, on the other hand, is a bright and articulate person. He reads poetry and Ernest Hemingway for fun. He expresses his thoughts without hesitation and knows himself and all of his talents. He is on the swim team and draws such pure art, no one can compare.

Now, is this enough to convince you that this novel is worth reading? No, of course not. My opinions have not been voiced out yet, nor my perception of the novel's theme. I believe this novel is very raw and the way the author strings together his words is, what I say, true art. It's so interesting how he describes every single thing in the novel with such passion, yet it is not tiring to read over and over again. Trust me, I read this book three times. The main character, Ari, is also very flawed. He is not perfect and sometimes his being an introvert is frustrating to read. But the mere fact that we have here the first person view of a troubled teenager (fighting his own private war inside him) should give us enough drive to finish the book. To see if there is development in his character or if the war in him has been extinguished. Or maybe just to see what is the truth about the imperfections of Ari and their reasons of existing. Yes, I say, the character development in this novel is phenomenal, but to be honest, the plot was quite slow. You will notice if you are not a patient reader. A slow plot, yet it was fine with me because it gave the author more time to go into detail about the sorrows and thoughts of all of his characters. As for the theme, I'm going with a coming-of-age book that is about not only finding one's self, but learning to accept who you really are in a world full of secrets that are waiting to be unravelled.

My rating of this on my Goodreads account is 5 stars, but I like to think of it as 4.5 stars out of 5.

Here are a few quotes that I took note of while I was reading (I only wrote down a few and most were pointless and really depressing):
"I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand."
"Words were different when they lived inside of you."
"The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea."

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