Through to You and I do not love each other. For starters, Cam’s plight had me feeling more of ‘Get on with it, mope-y grieving boy,’ instead of my usual ‘I weep for you, sad one.’ He’s just got so angsty, him and his drowning in his grief. And I got, in fact I did get it the first couple of paragraphs in… but to drag it on for what seemed like chapters? It bored me, is all. My indifference was not at all aided by that sudden shift into Twilight Zone. Instead of piquing my interest, I wound up confused and all brow a-furrow again, wondering WTF was going on. Too a jarring shift to be honest. So now, I’m struggling to sum it all up without spoiling things, but I will say things are not as they seem and once he steps through he and comes away completely changed. His view on what’s lost and his view on what’s important are altered. But, let me try it this way: there’s a before and after to him. Most of the ‘before’ we learn from his recollections. He was top jock till’ till he got injured, then everything became simply about Viv. Forward years on when he loses her too, and his a wreck. wreck. Wreck. A fact made more obvious by his treatment of everyone still bothering with him. I mean sure, his parents are basically out of the picture, and yes the therapist says exactly what you’d think a therapist would (*predictable*), but my point is they barely don’t rate in his world at all. It’s all Viv was this and Viv was that. It’s all about her and that she’s not there. So obviously, him losing her wrecks him. That it wrecks him at all should signal that something s not quite right. Then there’s after after, when the weird creeps in and the odd comes out. And I should have liked this introduction of the different; it’s just that I wasn’t buying it the easy explanations laid out. There’s barely any explanation actually, all just happening and no why-for. That’s my beef with it I suppose because in this after, we see how he must have been before it all. In love and happy and more than willing to do what another wants him to do (pushover?) Revelations made and acceptance underway, it’s obvious he learns that what he made of people and what they really were weren’t always going to go together. Then there’s that obvious bit of feeling good does not equal the right thing. Mostly though it’s accepting that things are the way they are… and things change; that people do as well… I’m just wish it could have all been delivered in less angsty boy mope-y kind of way. 2/5
