White Nights
It’s been a long time since I completed this book. Maybe I just needed a little time to process it all. People have been saying many things about this book, I remember seeing a reel that said, “If you wish to know about love, you have to read this book”. And it does talk about love, but not in the way one might expect.
Love in general is quite a big concept, and it’s nearly impossible to know about it unless you’ve experienced it yourself. But this book sheds a little light on this broadly small concept titled “Love”.
Firstly, let’s see my thoughts about love:
According to me, loving a person was quite a tedious task, you have to devote your time and efforts to that one person despite the uncertainty of them leaving you, it all seemed a little futile to me. But this book drastically changed those thoughts. I learned that loving someone isn’t an activity or an action that you do but it happens, it’s an involuntary action like breathing, or blinking, or living. You don’t put in extra effort to fall in love with anyone, one night, you’re walking along the road, and it just happens with a girl you see crying over the edge of the bridge.
The book will take you from a very frantic feeling to a very calm one and again show you the distorted heart. The story is about a guy falling in love with a girl who has been waiting for her lover, what challenges they both face, how lonely our protagonist is, and how two-minded one can be when there’s uncertainty associated with love.
The book sheds light on love as viewed from different points of view and it troubles me how justified it all seems in the end.
As viewed from the girl’s POV: Waiting or shall I say yearning for her lover. Holding on to the promise of him returning and taking her with him, away from all the torments of the world. (Isn’t that the purest form of love? Waiting for your lover till the very end).
As viewed from the protagonist’s POV: Comforting a stranger who seemed to need someone to hold her in the daunting of times. Comforting her, promising her a good life, being there for her, and bringing solace to her. (Well, that’s also love, if not love, care for a person you hold very dear to your heart).
As I raced to the end of the book, I felt a little disappointed as I was expecting to hold someone liable for all this; I wanted to blame either one of the two, but I just couldn’t, in the end, no one was at fault. Not the girl, who was genuinely waiting for her lover nor the guy who was there for her when she was in need of someone.
It is quite difficult to understand love as portrayed in White Nights, but I’m making my way through it, and maybe soon, I’ll understand what the Russian author was trying to say.
If you wish to know more about the story, then I recommend you check out this book, and lemme know in the comments if you have.
Happy Reading!