theremightbecupcakes's reviews
2820 reviews

This read was the audiobook, narrated by Cohen himself—a spiritual experience.

I first read my paper copy of this book in my early 30’s, in a literal fever dream. I read in one sitting during a wretched flu, with a fever that told me the living room curtains were moving in and out. Either the entirely right or the entirely wrong way to read it, because I was high right along with Laura.

I watched Twin Peaks when it first aired and I was the same age as Laura, in 1989. I rewatched it this year “on time”, watching Fire Walk with Me first (the Philip Jeffries day occurs on my birthday, February 16, then Dale Cooper enters the town on February 24, and dates are given rather regularly throughout the first two seasons into March). I just finished season 3, The Return, and the implications of the last moment have been haunting me all day.

Beyond my intense memory of that fever dream with Laura, I only took this novel in as a horror novel, even being a CPTSD fighter. But this time, I allowed myself to have a much more intimate, one-on-one journey with Jennifer Lynch’s backstory to her father’s work, because I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the Laura Palmer a tress herself, Sheryl Lee. I had to take so many breaks. I cried several times. It was a combination of knowing how it all ends now, and how it began, and hearing Laura’s voice telling her own story of being alone while being bombarded by company in all kinds of ways…

All I have left to watch is The Missing Pieces and the original pilot. I might rewatch Fire Walk with Me again, now that I have seen The Return. Then I will read Mark Frost’s books. I listened to David Lynch’s audiobook of Catching the Big Fish, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Part 8 of The Return is the most Lynchian thing I have ever seen, and it ties directly back into BOB and Laura. It could almost stand alone as a short film; I highly recommend it.

There’s so much more to all this—I am working on a podcast episode. 

But just a note about this novel: Twin Peaks is all about the best and worst in people, and what brings them out. There is animal death and animal cruelty in this novel, and Laura is involved. Also, you know the phrase “hurt people hurt people”? That as well. If you only wish to see her as acting out through cheating, promiscuity, and drug abuse, this book is not for you. The animal scenes are brief, but she returns to what she did with regret, so they come back up.

This book is lacking in details, good photography, and information necessary for knitting the patterns. One pattern calls for three skeins of worsted merino. How many yards/meters of actual yarn does that call for? What yarn was the sample in the photographs made in? Why are the photos blurry? Why does that hat look good on the cover and like some kids played catch with it on its pattern page? Why are some patterns written in one long single-spaced paragraph?
Also, there’s some bad advice. For the watch cap on the cover, for example, the author suggests stiffening the brim with a piece of cardboard. You do, and you’ll never be able to wash that hat.
Just why?

Do you think I'd give up? 
That this might've shook the love from me 
Or that I was on the brink 
How could you think, darlin', I'd scare so easily?

Now that it's done 
There's not one thing that I would change 
My life was a storm since I was born 
How could I fear any hurricane?

If someone asked me at the end

I'd tell them, "Put me back in it" 
Darlin’', I would do it again
If I could hold you for a minute 
Darlin', I'd go through it again

I would still be surprised I could find you 
Darlin', in any life 
If I could hold you for a minute 
Darlin', I would do it again

For all that was said 
Of where we'd end up at the end of it 
When the heart would cease, ours never knew peace 
What good would it be on the far side of things?

It was too soon 
When that part of you was ripped away 
A grip taking hold like a cancer that grows 
Each piece of your body that it takes

Though I know my heart would break

I'd tell them, "Put me back in it" 
Darlin’, I would do it again
If I could hold you for a minute 
Darlin’, I'd go through it again

I would still be surprised I could find you 
Darlin', in any life 
If I could hold you for a minute 
Darlin’, I would do it again

I would not change it each time 
Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I 
Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I 
I would not change it each time 
Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I 
Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I 
I would not change it each time 
Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I 
Heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I

—Hozier, “Francesca”, Unreal Unearth