I’ve been trying to go through a bunch of classics. While I was reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt, I wanted to pick up something short, just a little getaway when I needed a break from a thicker book. I often pick up a few books at the same time and regret it later. I keep doing that and I don’t know why. I sometimes feel like a different occasion requires a different book; it’s just a different vibe, you know.
One night, I was sitting on my sofa, zoning out with a dim light next to me. It shone on White Night which was on the top of the pile that’d been sitting on my sofa. I picked it up, flipped through the pages and wondered if I could finish reading it in one sitting. I’m a slow reader, I get distracted so easily that I often re-read sentences, unless I’m really in the zone.
I decided to go on YouTube to find myself an audiobook to get me focused and get through the pages. I found the White Night audiobook by Luke Thompson. I had it on 1.5x and it took me through the book in less than 3 hours.
I have to say, Luke is a very talented actor, we all know that, and he’s also a very good voice actor. The way he performed the characters in the book really helped put me into the storyline and I was following through it really well. It was as if I was watching a show in my head!
White Night is a novella. It was on my classics list not only because it is, of course, a classic, but also there was a trend online that it’s a must-read. I’m sure it’s on some of your feeds as well.
Basically, the storyline goes a lonely dreamer, who didn’t even state his name throughout the book, fell in love with a lady named Nastenka. He lived in his fantasy world of his own, hid his feelings and fell in love with her. While all she thought about was the man she’s waiting for who promised to marry her later when he returned to the country.
Over the four consecutive evenings, they met with each other and shared their own life stories. On the fourth night, Nastenka thought that she had been abandoned by the love of her life. She broke down and eventually accepted the narrator's love. At this exact moment, that’s when it caught me off guard, that the man showed up and she ran into his arms, leaving the narrator behind, just like that. That part shocked me a little. I didn’t see that coming at all.
To be completely honest, I think this book deserves to be a classic while it being a bit overrated online. I see why it’s a classic because the plot still relates to us till this day, especially to those who were born to be lovers; we imagine and fantasise things before they even get to happen.
The novella was published in 1848. To connect your feelings with someone from the 1800s who felt the exact same way and to find comfort in books because of it, this is the power of fiction. When you lose yourself in these pages, you often find your own life mirrored back at you, as if the author were writing your own story in real time.
