And again the narrator is left alone by another of his lovers...but his time is the secon woman that leaves him because of Louise, which I think it is important to mention because that means Louise is very important for the narrator. Yes, now I call him narrator and not Narry anymore, I do not feel like giving him a fake identity but the one he is giving to us, an invisible one. He is even caring for cancer patients and studying the illness, if that is not caring for Louise... maybe he is doing more than Elgin, even though what both are doing is very different... Elgin can really help her in her development of the cancer...the author cannot.
I am feeling a bit lost in the church kind of episode, like he goes around the topic of him going to pray for Louise since December but adding a lot of details from the church which I do not think are very important? (Sorry if that sounded bad!) What. I really find important is how he is getting mad (even if he does not say so) for Louise, overthinking about her death and how she could be alone there in Switzerland... my thoughts are that he is alive because of her, hope is what makes him on going ahead. He is reading about coping with her death! At least he is not thinking about suicide... thanks Jeanette!
“You’ll get over it...” (155) I feel so identified with this part of the novel... it reminded me of a hard period when I lost a good friend of mine and how all pleasing and positive words that were supposed to help you ‘get over it’ were lost in the air when people you love say them to you... it is easy to say it but I do not think you actually ‘get over it’ but learn how to live with it: “the gap never closes” (155). It is weird to jump from the sorrow of the narrator in August to Gail’s birthday and some HD2 party... whatever I was not really focused on that part after that... oh wait no Gail, don’t tell the narrator he did wrong leaving Louise you know nothing!
I am starting to feel like the narrator, with anxiety looking for Louise everywhere and not knowing what to do or where to go next, as her parents did not give him any clue besides that she is not in London...
In addition, he is making me depressed talking about death and cemeteries and all about the place we are all destined to, about the hole that waits for us ... goosebumps!
It is quite long and tiring all the descriptions about what is he doing after all the news and the train journey,I think there is no hope to find her...I start to believe she is really dead...
"Did I invent her?" (189), she was such a perfect woman for him, they lived such beautiful and perfect moments he even thinks she could not be a real person but a dream. To be honest I am very sad for this open ending of the novel, it seems that everything he went through with her was just imagination but her parents were actually alive? Elgin actually knew her? It cannot be possible for an imaginary person of someone to be known for a man, been married to him and also divorced! Nor having parents and knowing where couldn't she be when the narrator wanted to find her.

To conclude, well, I will kind of conclude this whole adventure and experiences, tough ones. Found out that what I expected from the written note at the beginning of the book "For Gail, Christmas '92 with all my love Louise xxx". It could have been as if this 'imaginary' Louise wrote the whole novel for Gail Right to know everything behind the story of the narrator and herself (of course it is not the real truth but it looks cute to imagine). However, it is curious how two persons with exactly the same names as the ones we do now in the story appear in the note, unfortunately, we will never know the hidden truth...I really wish there could be another novel to confort the narrator and to know at least his identity and what really happened with Louise! I really liked it, even though open endings are not my favourite thing to encounter!

In addition, I found an interesting article after reading the novel (just because I do not like reading anything about any book before reading it, finding spoilers is just awful!). One of the things that shocked me of what Huang pointed out is "the text feels a descriptive lacuna for the reader to fill" (2) in order to find out, or just imagine, the gender of the narrator. Through my experience, I supposed the narrator was a boy, even though sometimes I thought it could be a girl because there were some descriptions about relationships with boys. This goes hand in hand with "the page's blank spaces invite readers to generate meaning beyond the physical text itself" (2), stated Huang. With this, "the reader is impelled to become a participant within the text" (3) and not a simple reader, but the creator of the new meaning of the text, with imagination and creation. It is also quite shocking that Barthes, according to Huang, argued that "the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author" (The Death of the Author, p.147).

I will leave the article cited here, it is interesting to know the position of the reader, our position throughout the whole novel. Even though we did not read it before the novel, we can see how we have actually been a creative reader and went through what Barthes and Elizabeth Huang argued. And, by extension, Denis Diderot quote from the beginning of the article: "But who shall be the master? The writer or the reader?" (Jacques le Fataliste et son maître, 1796).

Huang, Elizabeth. "Reading the Body-Text: an Examination of Reading through Jeanette Winterson's 'Written on the Body'." Academia.edu, Blackwell's Essay Prize Entry.

Hopefully I will see you next time, with another book, or anecdote, or who knows how I will surprise myself with...
Anyways, see you soon!

Cristina xx