4.5

Admission found its way to my to-read list through my discovering the movie version. Being the book-before-movie person, that — reading first — was exactly what I did. And now I'm not sure I want to watch anymore, even though the film has Nat Wolff and Tina Fey (for me, only in that order, but never mind) in it, who got me into wanting to see it in the first place. The kind of confusion happens as a result of either of two situations: the reading experience having been so awful I want to forget it as soon as possible, let alone reliving it, or — so intensely powerful I'm afraid to ruin it, to break something that is so entirely and ever unforgettably mine. This time it's the second category.

This is — was, but really, is — a truly overwhelming thing. I am as much at a loss of words as the author so obviously, wholly, mesmerizingly has her way with them. They, words, are the main character of the novel — haunting, dazzling, never a single one out of place and striking you with how precisely they’d been chosen right to the very core.

It took me a little over a month to finish the book. I absorbed it gradually, not daring to miss something; at times I was so overflowed with emotions I had to put it down for weeks until I’d feel I was ready to let myself back in. The pain in Portia's post-Mark state was vivid and all but palpable, her relationship with John a burning feeling of being alive and loved (which is saying a lot coming from me, whose usual response to heterosexual pairings is a sense of infinite boredom and an urgent need to hit something, or someone, doesn't really matter.) I can't even begin to describe how completely I fell in love with Jeremiah; his personality, the not fitting in with order and craving, craving for knowledge, claiming it on his own terms. And damn I want to see how amazing Nat is playing him. But you can’t create such a character and in the end leave him barely unfolded. I desperately wanted more of Jeremiah as the story-time he’s been given was nowhere close to being at least enough.

It’s a 9/10, and I don’t want to go into much detail about the one aspect of Admission that was appalling (which of course I will); the one both the story and I could do perfectly fine without: