It’s when you give something that you have very little of, that you truly give.
If I had to describe the book If Only It Were True in a few words, I would say: love, hope, friendship, love, trust, life, death, love. I repeated the word love because it is the essence of all things. Love is all about hope and the meaning of life. And you must not think that it’s only about the love for your partner, but that endless love for others, for life, for all the beautiful things around us. It is the love for the present moment, the love for the sun and the sea, the love that arises from thin air.
In Marc Levy’s book, love appears – you’ll find this amusing – from the closet. It appears as a ghost and it doesn’t want to live. Our main character, Arthur, is enslaved to his own imagination, but he is also the fool who loves differently than the rest of us. They say love is blind, you embrace it with your eyes closed, and you see nothing around you. Arthur is the only one who sees Lauren. The others were the blind ones in his world. This ‘situation’ didn’t stop him from living the most beautiful moments.
Lauren, the ghost, had a car accident and fell into a coma. After a while, she manages to show herself to Arthur, who was the current tenant in her former apartment. And this is the beginning of the adventure…
“What I have to tell you is not easy to understand. It may seem impossible to accept. But if you’ll listen to my story – if you’re willing to trust me – then maybe in the end you’ll believe me. And it’s very important that you, in particular, should believe me. For without knowing it, you’re the only one person in the world who can share my secret.” Keep in mind these words, it is the beginning, but also the beautiful end of the story.
The story can have many interpretations. It depends on your mood when you read it. I chose the one in which love overcomes any obstacle. Arthur is trying to discover the past in order to go further into the future. He cannot do it until the ghost makes its appearance.
Lauren is a kind of personal mirror. She helps him know himself, to see beyond appearances, to appreciate every second of life. And there is a story that I must mention, a story that Lauren decided to tell Arthur in order to distract him. In fact, it was a little game:
“She told him to imagine he’d won a contest. The prize was that every morning, a bank would open an account in his name containing 86,400 dollars. There were only two rules: “The first rule is that everything you fail to spend is taken from you that night. You can’t cheat, you can’t switch the unspent money to another account: you can only spend it. But when you wake next morning, and every morning after that, the bank opens a new account for you, always eighty-six thousand, four hundred dollars, for the day. Rule number two is that the bank can break off the game without warning. It can tell you at any time that it’s over, that it’s closing the account and there won’t be another one. Now, what would you do?”
This is a game that makes you wonder especially when you find out its point: “We all have that magic bank account: it’s time! A big account, filled with fleeting seconds.”
Every morning we are credited with eighty-six thousand, four hundred seconds, and it’s upon us to spent them properly, to use them right. At the end of the day, the unused ones are lost, and also, the time we have is limited. At any moment, life can end.
This is a life lesson, isn’t it?
I won’t say more because I want you to discover Marc Levy’s first novel, If Only It Were True. Though, I must say that the book was screened in 2005 into a beautiful movie, “Just like haven“, with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo as main characters.
You must read the book, and must watch the movie, divas! It’s a lovely story!
Watch the trailer bellow.
Andres
BUY the book in RO on Serial Readers
BUY the book in EN on BookDepository (Free delivery worldwide)
Photos: www.torange.us
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