I only love one thing.

rillje22
Apr 26, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Jun 19, 2023

Of course I love plenty of people, my friends, my family, the ocean which is basically sentient.... BUT Aristotle and Dante Discover Secrets of the Universe the masterpiece written by Benjamin Alire Sáenz is the only thing that I truly love. I'm being so serious, just thinking about the book makes my heart feel like it is going to burst. The book is a coming of age story of two Mexican-American teen boys and tragedy and love and summer and I recommend it to everyone who asks. The reasons I love this book are bountiful but the ones your reading experience may lack are as follows:

1. I read it my junior year of high school, in my opinion the perfect time to read it. At this age, I could really appreciate the nuances of the book, feel nostalgic for the period of life the characters were experiencing (around 15 years old), and I was also young enough to really get engaged with their stories and long for similar experiences.

2. Like one of the main characters, I am bisexual and was at the time closeted. I was craving a little #representation. My own experiences helped me understand Ari and Dante's dynamic a lot more and iykyk a wholesome coming out story will break some of us.

3. One of my best friends recommended it to me, and it is her favorite book as well. Having someone to gush about this book with will make it all the better (love ya Alison). Me and my friend often find ourselves assigning things as Ari or Dante because they are so well developed.

Now that I have revealed my biases, let me show the facts of why this book is incredible.

First of all, the book is basically poetry with a plot. Every word is absolutely beautiful and Sánenz's writing reveals so many important takeaways or "secrets of the universe" that Ari realizes through the book. I am a sucker for morals in a book and so many times I ran to the my notes app to write down what wisdom the next realization brought to me.

To share a couple of my favorite quotes:

(to be honest I literally started crying pulling some of these quotes, I'm attached okay?!)

“To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.”

A powerful quote on its own, but within the context of Ari's inner monologue? It was so profound. Ari's character is very closed off before he met Dante so it was so endearing to see Ari recognize vulnerability as a thing to be proud of.

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”

Isn't that the most beautiful quote ever?? I love how Sánez uses simple sentence structure and elementary words to convey such complex ideas. The contrast in the wisdom being relayed vs. the relatively uneducated it is doing so reminds the reader this character is only 15 and just figuring it all out.

“Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed. Had I been hurt? Had I healed? Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing.”

My scars have always been one of my favorite parts about myself, and this just articulated every reason why and made them even more meaningful to me. The parallel structure of all the sentence fragments perfectly sets up two ends of a spectrum that leads to the conclusion of healing not being linear, it instead winds between hurting and healing.