Sorrow: Taking The Leap And Learning To Fall
By: Priya Sridhar
Tags: Book Review, Literature, Life, Art, Books

Some novels make you think about the what-ifs, and what you have going forward. Others help you decide that you are drifting and need a wake-up call. Whether that is finding your passion, deciding on a dream job, or chasing after someone you love, the pages can provide that epiphany.

Sorrow talks about the price of taking risks. Yet it also emphasizes that making a difficult choice and leaping high is necessary for life; otherwise, you become a hollow facsimile of someone else’s dreams and desires and cannot fulfill your own. Living is finding out who you are with your actions, and what you want to be.

We are going to go into spoiler territory. You have been warned.

Sorrow by Tiffanie DeBartolo

Joe Harper is a wimp. He’s free to admit it. After his brother died, Joe fell under the thumb of his controlling, emotionally abusive father and did everything that Bob Harper wanted. He goes to college, studies construction, and doesn’t argue. Guitar feeds his soul, as does studying trees and hiking. He makes a best friend in a fellow musician named Cal, who wanted to start a band with him in Brooklyn. Yet somehow he ends up working on construction as a studio assistant for October Danko, a performance artist with big dreams. All Joe has to do is film regularly and not distract her. It seems simple enough. October is also dating someone else while expressing that she’s attracted to Joe. Things go wrong when Joe realizes who that someone is, and how many people he could hurt. He’s afraid to make that decision but knows the other options are also hurtful.

The first thing we learn is that Joe doesn’t know how to take risks. It’s relatable when he says that Bob planned out his whole life for him and took offense when Joe politely refused the endgame ten years after graduating college. His first conscious choice was quitting Bob’s construction business and refusing to become an heir. It was hard, and he was able to convince himself it was a good idea, but that’s because Bob is a suffocating person. Joe left so that he could live. Other choices, however, elude him; he’s afraid of pursuing guitar, becoming a musician with Cal, and deciding if he wants a life where you can fall hard and fail.

In most novels, October would be the manic-pixie dreamgirl. She would exist to coax Joe out of his shell and that would mean they end up together. This doesn’t happen here; the “Artist of Life” October is more experienced than Joe and more contemplative. She has personal goals, and desires. Also, while she changes Joe, she doesn’t make him a better person. In fact, he remains the same wimp when seeing her between installations and work. Joe ultimately has to make the decision on if he’s going to take that leap. There are hints that it’s all him, like when he leaves his apartment abruptly without worrying about the deposit he will lose because he loves his residence on October’s land. He just has to turn that faucet on and let the adventure flow.

October instead gives too much of herself to other people in her art. The first exhibit that Joe learns about in early chapters is one video where she asked people to stick pins in her, sterilized because otherwise, she’d be dead or badly hospitalized, to simulate voodoo dolls and pain. The voyeurs went a little too far, and October was left with a lot of blood on her arms. She admits that they missed the point of the exercise, about what you do when you have the capacity to hurt someone else. October doesn’t know how to put up barriers and boundaries when asking for a connection. This ends up hurting both her and Joe.

With October being emotionally vulnerable, Rae has to manage her and the exhibits. Rae is tough, motherly, and protective; she makes sure that October doesn’t get hurt and has a reliable crew. Joe comes to respect her brusqueness, if not exactly the suspicion aimed towards him.

Then we have Cal. Cal is a great friend, who knows that Joe was suffering under his father’s thumb. He wanted to start a band with his best friend but eventually accepted that Joe was going to college since Bob’s word was law at the time. Apparently, Cal and October met and hit it off, while coincidentally Joe starts working for the latter and becoming attracted to her spirit. The minute Cal finds out, he’s thrilled and calls for a celebration because his two favorite people have met and become friends, even working partners. Needless to say, this makes Joe feel worse about his crush on October and later affair because Cal is the only guy who stuck out his neck for “Harp”. No guy deserves his best friend taking his girlfriend out for a whirl.

In the end, Cal is not mad that Joe betrayed him. (He is at first, but gets that all out in one decisive punch.) Cal instead tells off Joe for being a wimp and refusing to choose what he wants. It saddens him that Joe is throwing his life away due to nerves and Bob’s shadow and that Joe is shriveling away. Cal knows that we all die someday, so you need to take risks. This, not October, gives Cal the push he needs to find October again and be truly honest about his feelings.

Sorrow is an uncomfortable book. You see a grey moral dilemma where none of the endings would have been happy. Yet that’s how life is; we end up in those dilemmas where we hurt others and feel pain in turn. All we can do is hope we’re brave enough to take a leap when the time comes. Joe nearly blows it, but it’s never too late to fall. He just needed to take that first step.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.