10 Dec 2017

Review: Dennis & Greer: A Love Story


★★★★☆
'' ''Please do not read this book unless you were young once. Some people never were, you know. Don't read it unless you recall your youth with fondness and nostalgia, because this is the story of youth, told by perhaps the least objective and least accurate of biographers - youth itself. In his own words, sometimes soaringly beautiful, often rash and unrealistic, but always with self-honesty, this youth gives his own pronouncement of the goodness of life, discovering first love and the horrors of war at one and the same time he deals with their confusing disparities as only optimism can. As described by a friend, 'He was a rough, tough Marine who dared to be gentle.' '' '' 
How can you rate anyone's lives with just five stars? For some, it can be a measly one, but to some, it could be more than the limited five. So, me giving Dennis & Greer four stars, doesn't actually mean anything. 


'' One of us has to open our eyes and if it won't be you, then it shall be me I'm old enough and ready for marriage, but I'm not so sure about you, and it would kill me to see you dissatisfied and tied down. we are both such dreamers, such romantics that maybe when the blindness clears away, we will find ourselves with nothing but each other, a two-room apartment and a couple of half-finished educations. It's enough for me, but is it for you? '' - Greer

 The story is told in letters between Dennis and Greer and Greer's journal entries. It delves deep into their lives, into their feelings for each other. At first, the letters felt so unreal; Who would write with such wordings? They hold nothing back. Once you get into it, you can't stop.

'' However, my love for you and my knowledge of yours for me is the rod to grasp now. Together we can be strong and good and happy and successful. But we must know what is ahead. Even roses have thorns. '' - Greer

A relationship held together with daily-ish letters is a ship waiting to sink. Not every one can keep it together, and as vibrantly alive, as Dennis and Greer could. It's weird to read the letters and keep in mind that these are a real thing, a compilation of real letters that have travelled miles upon miles to reach their intended. 
'' I will be breathless (in a way) until I see you this weekend. I dream of you every night; I love you with all my heart. '' - Dennis 

Above all, this is a love story. It is titled as a love story. From the beginning you read words of love and they just grow more frequent and stronger the closer you get to the end. In the middle, there is sorrow, struggles, and uncertainties mixed in. All the things love brings in. At home we have this saying ''the number of sorrows is a constant'' which applies into Dennis and Greer's story perfectly.
'' Oh times we've had, girl! You will always be my sweetheart, and I will always love you and remember how sweet it is to live with you. Nothing detracts from it; it is an experience in living what can take away from it? It is an entity of reality, of existence and I do not object to one particle of it. '' - Dennis

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