"Nothing Burns As Bright As You," by Ashley Woodfolk

My life is full of poetic coincidence, the strange alignment of events and circumstances and feelings that evoke the perfect “and therefore.” There is no script, no plan, no intention, but somehow my world possesses this amazing ability to weave disparate things together. This book is one of those weird poetic coincidences.

“Nothing Burns As Bright As You” tells the story of two girls with a relationship that burns too hot and too fast until it blows up in their faces. The perspective is from one of the girls, the one who identifies and cold and slow and careful. The author in her endnote explains her reason for writing the collection and I could not identify with it more. For me, the loss of female friendship is complex and difficult and sometimes layered in inexplicable nuance that historically I have not understood.

So isn’t it interesting that this book was sent in a box with a few others by one of those lost friends? Isn’t it interesting that this is the last one for me to read and then…there are no more? Isn’t it interesting how the author talks about friendship for a time that was meant to be for that time, even if it brought pain?

In a broader sense, I think this is why I like to write my book reviews. If you have read any of them, all of them, just this one, you might notice that I don’t dissect them, obsessively quote them, provide an unbiased analysis void of personal attachment. That’s the point. Go find these books reviewed by professional reviewers if you want that kind of perspective. For me, these reviews are meant to show you how books live in my life, how they could live in yours. That they are meant to be personally identified with. That the way I identify with them will not be the way you do. But isn’t it interesting that we can have these unique, personal relationships with these books even though there are unbiased analyses out there we might not agree with or are too sterile to fully encapsulate our own feelings?

All this to say, this book takes a personal place in my world, in my library, in my literary memory. And isn’t it nice that when friends leave, we can at least still have the art they loved?