Fiction Post: Juice

When I first picked up this book I was actually excited to start reading it. I have enjoyed most the fiction stories as is in this class. I thought I'd finally be able to comprehend a story instead of feeling like the words were just going in one ear and out the other. Well, I clearly was mistaken about that. This book confuses me like no other.

For instance, all throughout this book it talks about a crisis or whatever that happened so now there is no one left in the city. What exactly is this crisis? I'm almost done with the book, maybe have like 5 or 6 pages left, and I still have no idea what this crisis is. The person in the book, I'm unsure whether it's a boy or girl, talks about (on pg 13) about how when they eat they hope that the towns people will return. They don't care if they return and are happy or angry because they just want the townspeople back. But what does it matter if you eat the food that's there? The townspeople are gone so they clearly aren't going to be eating it.

Overall the book does display a theme of loneliness. This person in the book left the town they grew up in, for whatever reason I'm still unsure of, and ended up coming back to find that there is no one in that town anymore. The thing I really don't understand is the importance of the signs that are being talked about. It's obvious that this person isn't to their hometown yet because there are people are that they can talk to and look at the signs with, but I don't understand why the signs are so important. On pg 39, it talks about how "the feelings that anchored me the other day to the sign, Slow to Bridge, were not feelings as much as they were remembrances." Are the signs just a way for this person to connect with their sister that makes the signs? Like a way to remember her? I honestly have no clue.

Well, I'm pretty confused on this book overall. Almost as confused as I was all throughout the time that we were learning about poetry and reading it. I miss the days where books seemed to make sense to me....short stories too. Oh well.