В тази статия цитатите от книгата са в оригинал на английски език. Може да видите преведените от мен цитати.
Това е един страхотен трилър на Лаура Маршал. „Покана за приятелство“ няма превод на български език. Книгата е с две корици – британска и американска версия (на снимката е американската).
Страхотен трилър, който държи в напрежение през цялото време. Не се използват сложни думи в книгата, но начина, по който авторката борави с тях е уникален. Невероятен стил, немислимо точни сравнения, метафори и много, много тънко чувство за хумор. Докато четях книгата се възхищавах на авторката и снимах откъсите, които най-много ми допаднаха.
I know that Facebook offers an idealized version of life, edited and primped to show the world what we want it to see.
I’ve thought about deleting my Facebook account before, to prevent myself from getting sucked into that terrible time-wasting vortex where you find yourself poring through the wedding photos of someone you’ve never met instead of meeting a work deadline.
„You talked to Sophie Hannigan about this? Are you still in touch with her?“ Esther manages to give the impression that if I answer affirmative I will sink even lower in her estimation.
„God no, not at all, not since school. I tracked her down as well.“
„On Facebook?“
„Yes.“
„Of course. I bet she’s on there all the time, isn’t she? ‘Look how gorgeous I am, look at my amazing life.’ I can’t stand it. That’s why I’m not on there; it’s all so bloody fake, as if it’s actually designed to make you feel crap about your own life.“
I call Henry into the kitchen for his toast, and he comes ambling out holding Manky. One piece of his hair is sticking straight up from his head like a horn and his pajamas are inside out and back to front. My heart swells with love for him.
So I don’t tell them who I was at school, I just laugh along and allow them to think that I’m the same, that my adolescence was filled with drunken escapades, giggly sleepovers, pregnancy scares. But it wasn’t, was it? My experience of being a teenager would be like a foreign country to them.
„I didn’t think I cared what anyone here thought of me. Actually, I didn’t want to care what anyone thought of me.“ She’s so scrupulous with herself, so honest about her own motives. „But you know what? I’ve worked bloody hard to get where I am. I’ve got a great career, a gorgeous husband, two lovely children. I’m OK. I’m more than OK, in fact; I’m properly happy. And I’m afraid there’s a little part of me — or may be not so little — that wants to show them, people that might still be laughing about me, or even worse pitying me in a corner of their minds.“
„You look amazing tonight,“ he said softly.
Little flutters rippled through me. I felt like someone else. This was a scenario I had played so many times in my head, it didn’t seem right that it could be happening in real life. I had my back to the wall and as he stepped toward me I rested my weight against it, not trusting my legs to support me. Sam put his hand to my face and traced a finger gently over my cheek and down the side of my neck. A shudder ran through my entire body. He leaned in and I could see his eyes coming nearer and nearer until everything became a blur. He kissed me softly, holding my top lip between both of his for a second before pulling back.
„Is this OK?“ he asked.
I nodded, unable to speak.
He kissed me again, harder this time, his tongue exploring my mouth, pressing up against me so closely that I could barely breathe, hands running over the slippery satin of my dress, my insides turning hot and liquid in response. His fingers pressed hard into my flesh, a delicious pain that shot bolts of electricity trough my body.
The end of something is always the start of something else, even if you can’t see it at the time.
„You are not on Facebook, are you?“
„No, like I told you, I stay right away from social media,“ he says. „Full of nutters.“
Back in the kitchen, I lean against the worktop, hugging myself tightly because there is no one else to do it for me. I’m the only one who can take care of me, and I vow to do it better in the future.
Perhaps it’s simply not possible to truly know another person. When it comes down to it, we’re all alone. Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves.
People compare losing a person to losing a limb sometimes… ‘Oh, it was like losing my right arm,’ they say. It’s nothing like that. You can learn to cope without an arm, without a leg. You never learn to cope with losing a child. You never get used to it. It never gets easier.
Did no one ever tell you to be careful about what you put online? Photos of your little boy in school uniform? Casual mentions of your local high street? Pictures of your house? You even moan on Facebook about having to put him in after-school club, so I knew you wouldn’t appear at three o’clock today with all the proper mothers.
I run to him and pick him up, squeezing him to me, burying my face in his hair, his neck. Underneath the odor that school has added, of pencils and dusty floors and other children’s sticky fingers he still has his essential smell, the one I’ve been inhaling like a glue-sniffer since the day he was born.
Anyone can be anyone on Facebook.
I should know better than anyone that things aren’t always what they seem. It’s like when someone tells a story about something that happened when you were there, and it’s not at all how you remember it. It might be they’re telling it a certain way for effect, to make people laugh, or to impress someone. But sometimes that’s simply how they remember it. For them, it’s the truth. That’s when it becomes hard for you to know whether what you remember is the truth, or whether it’s just your version of it.