The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan

After I felt completely disappointed with the last two books of Grant County, I needed to reset almost. I decided to go the non-fiction route and knock off a few books from my 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime list. Sort of like a palette cleanser. I haven't read too many books on the list that I haven't completely enjoyed, so I selected a few books: The Opposite of Loneliness, Cosmos, The Last Lecture, and Me Talk Pretty One Day. Me Talk Pretty One Day is by David Sedaris, and I really enjoyed his book Calypso last year, but I was first drawn to The Opposite of Loneliness. I know you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it really pulled me in. The synopsis sealed the deal.

(Source: Kelsey Darling)
Marina Keegan had just graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May of 2012. She had a play ready to be produced and job at the New Yorker. While in Yale, she was a talented and loved individual who really left her mark on the people she came into contact with. She had the whole world in front of her. Five days after graduation, when she was just 22, she died in a car crash when her boyfriend fell asleep at the wheel. After her death, the last essay she had written for the Yale Daily News, "The Opposite of Loneliness," went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. Her family and friends, knowing how much of an impact Marina had on their lives, and knowing what she would have accomplished in this world, gathered a selection of her essays and stories and published it.

This entire book was bitter sweet. There was so much talent in these writings. The book is separated into fiction and non-fiction with nine of each. It starts with an introduction by Anne Fadiman, who is a teacher at Yale, and taught Marina. Her introduction is enough to rip your heart out and leave you crying. After this, Marina's essay, The Opposite of Loneliness, is the first thing you read, before entering the fiction section of the book. I feel that I enjoyed her fiction more than her non-fiction, but there were works in both that reached me deep in my core. I kept sitting there as I read it thinking, "this is a girl whose books I would have read if I saw them in the bookstore," and then remember that all I would be reading of hers would be this posthumously published collection. The loss of such a talented person who was on the precipice of changing the world is utterly upsetting.

The Opposite of Loneliness

"We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life." (p. 1) In this essay, Marina discusses her feeling of how grateful she is for her experiences at Yale, but the fear she feels for when she wakes up the day after Commencement and she has to leave. She explains how it's not exactly a community feeling, but a sense of camaraderie that the people around you are going through something similar that others do not fully understand. She talks about her fears and excitements for what comes next. The entire essay is a familiar feeling I have had different times in my life when I experienced a huge change - moving to college, then another college; starting new jobs; moving in with my boyfriend. There are a finite number of people experiencing exactly what you are experiencing in these moments, and while the feeling vary from person to person, there is an extent to which you are all in this together, and Marina perfectly voices this feeling. You can read her essay on Yale Daily News.

Winter Break

This is the second fictional story in the collection. It tells the story of Addie home from college on break and how she is realizing how she is finally noticing things that you do not really notice about your parents and home when you're younger. "She stared for a second, struggling to see through the blinding headlights. I saw something then that I hadn't seen before, or if I had, I'd chosen to ignore. There was a frailty to her posture, a thinness in her cheeks. She looked tired and cold for the instant before she lit up in motion, jogging slightly toward the hum of my car." (pp. 34-35) Throughout the story, she notices the her younger brother has grown up, that her dads drinking might be concerning, and that her mother is utterly exhausted. While I noticed the opposite, I remember having a similar feeling when returning home on one of my breaks. I remember being utterly scared that my parents, who had been married for 38 years at this point, had never not had a child in their house, and was scared that they would not have anything in common anymore. When I returned on one of the breaks, I discovered the opposite actually. I witnessed them holding hands more, going out on dates, sharing secret glances. While this brought me peace, in the story, Addie is concerned. But she is also in a relationship that is beginning to really be serious and puts her focus on that. I cannot speak for how other people feel when returning home, but it was nice to know that Marina had put into words something that I had felt in that awkward stage of growing up.

Reading Aloud

"Only Anna can see her wilting breasts and her varicose veins. So she looks at him and he looks at nothing. And they let the words lift off the pages of the manuals and brochures and cereal-box backs and float fully formed from the sixty-something naked woman to the twenty-something blind man." (p. 49) This one starts out fun, in a dark way. Anna use to be a dancer, but then she got married, and then got to old to dance. When her husband retired, she did not really enjoy him being home; but, when he went back into the workforce, she missed him being there, which is when she started getting "sick." She's a hypochondriac obviously. Her doctor suggests that she reads for the blind, which is how she meets Sam, a twenty-something who has been blind since the age of two. She shortly realizes that she can undress and he would never know, and in those moments, she can be her young self again with the beautiful dancers body and grace. It brings her a sort of peace. When she is not doing this, she moves through her life in a sort of daze, and wonders what her husband would do if he came home from work one night and she had died while choking on a piece of steak. And then, her husband has a heart attack and Anna is suddenly alone. I don't know how only Marina was when she wrote this piece, but how she was so perfectly able to get into the brain of a sixty-something woman and what she feels about her body speaks volumes about how talented she was as a writer. I think that is what made me enjoy this story the most.

Against the Grain

"Gluten. The king of all polypeptide chains. The enemy of my existence and the hero of my deathbed feast." (p. 157) This was my favorite non-fiction; even more than The Opposite of Loneliness. In it, Marina discusses her lifelong problem with celiac disease. At 18 months, it became clear to her parents that something wasn't right. She was malnourished and in and out of the hospital, so her mother dedicated herself to figuring out what was wrong with her daughter. But discovering that cause did not necessarily make the problem easier to solve. In the 90s, celiac disease was still relatively unknown, and those that had it didn't really discuss it due to the unpleasant side effects it causes that aren't exactly dinner topics. Marina's mother went above and beyond to always make sure that Marina would be able to live as normal a life as possible. Everything from providing a gluten free cone when a class trip ended with ice cream to make additional gluten free pies at Thanksgiving. Marina discusses how it really embarrassed her. Having celiac disease was bad enough, but having her mother so openly go out of her way to make sure Marina would feel the same cause her unwanted attention. Her mother was the force behind updating Yale's food program to include more gluten free options and use gluten free labels. Marina, stressed out and tired of watching everything she consumed and being careful about kissing her boyfriend or requesting a clean grill at a restaurant, began to not take it as seriously in college. And then she read an article about how people with celiac disease would be putting future children at risk. This article changed everything for her. Having bizarre allergies, I understand all sides of this. I recently had a very bad reaction and realized how much more seriously I need to take my allergies. Reading this essay was like an additional sign to me that our bodies are not something to screw around with.

Rating: 8/10
Author: Marina Keegan
Genres: Non-Fiction, Short Stories, Essays
Dates Read: February 21-24, 2020

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