The Lightness audiobook

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind - Buddha --------------------------------------- The beginning I know for sure. Once upon a time, My father went to the Levitation Center. I also know the next part: and he never came back. Sixteen-year-old Olivia Ellis is on a mission. Her father vanished about a year ago. Not on the best of terms with her mother, she has left home and signed herself into the last place she had known him to be, hoping to dig up some clues to his current whereabouts. The Levitation Center (not its real name), which Olivia calls Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls, (dare we suggest Dharma Drilling for the Damaged? No? Oh, ok) runs an annual summer program for teens. Learn some Japanese floral arranging, meditation techniques, archery, and gardening, among other things over the eight-week session. The campers are a motley crew, with a diversity of dark tales to tell. They were slick-finish girls, cat-eye girls, hot-blood girls. They were girls who reveled. They were girls who liked boys and back seats, who slid things that weren’t theirs into tight pockets, who lit fires and did doughnuts in the high school parking lot. They were girls who left marks. They were girls who snuck. Girls who drank whiskey and worse by the waterfront…They were girls who ran away, who inked their own arms with needles and ballpoint pens, who got things pierced below the neck. (none of them named Heather, as far as I can recall) And then there is Serena. She has been at the camp for some years, more of an institution than a regular. She does not sleep in dorms with the other girls, but lives in a fancy tent, among those available for the more fiscally able. She is one of those people who draws all eyes to her. Wicked smart, attractive, but not necessarily the prettiest, there is a presence to her that is compelling. She has two acolytes, Lauren and Janet. Olivia is drawn to her, becoming a part of their small circle. Serena sets the group a mission, by summer’s end, learn to levitate. Emily Temple - image from her site - maybe searching for a cabin?Serena and her crew go through a range of activities designed to elevate their consciousness, or something. The Feeling exercise they engage in is a fun bit of ASMR nerve stimulation. I get all tingly just thinking about it. They try to ease the heavy lifting with a bit of weight reduction, in a nettlesome way. And see what they might do to seduce the studly 23 yo gardener, who is reputed to know things, into giving them the lowdown on how to elevate their game. Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals- BuddhaThere is a fairy tale aspect to The Lightness, from using Once upon a time to having to go through the woods to learn truths. From there being the equivalent of a huntsman’s cabin in those woods, to a magical meeting place. From a local legend about a weeping willow carving lines in a cliff-face with its tears to Laurel’s idyllic vision of what American teenage life looks like. Rumors abound about Serena being maybe a witch or a werewolf or engaging in bizarre, dire activities involving blood. …she seemed to have sprung from the ground, as much a part of the landscape as the rock beneath her thighs, as unconcerned and constant as the punishing heat itself. And the girls engage in plenty of magical thinking to fill this motif out even more. My disappointments in the book are slight. Olivia is pretty well organized to have gotten herself into the Center, yet does remarkably little to actually dig into dad’s records there. It seemed to me that settling, for the most part, on connecting with daddy dearest by learning what he might have learned seemed inconsistent. But, then, teenager. This is, after all, a coming of age novel, so inconsistency is a part of the landscape. A big piece of Olivia’s growth is experiencing a range of desires, and sustaining an inner dialogue about them. She wants what she wants, but struggles with what is right, although she is well aware that she is corruptible. She is far from alone in facing such challenges. And they are not all sexual in nature. Ambition looms large. What is she willing to do, to herself or others, in order to realize her desires? What are her limits, our limits, physically and morally?There is a thriller/suspense core that Temple manages to keep aloft throughout. We know from the prologue that something terrible has happened. The story is told from adult Olivia’s perspective, so we know she gets through it all, physically, anyway. But she keeps reminding us, in case we forgot, that something awful happened that summer and we should keep wondering what it is, how it will happen, and who will not make it through. This worked well enough, I suppose, in sustaining, even ramping up tension, but I sometimes felt like I was in a classroom in which the teacher clapped his/her hands very loudly every so often to make sure everyone was paying attention, when I was one of the people who had been awake the whole time. If I had known what was going to happen that summer, maybe I would have paid more attention to Harriet orJust look at what happened that summer. Look at me now.orI couldn’t have known that by the end of summer, one of us would be erased completely, blacked out, as though something had spilled over the photograph…And so onOne feature that I found fun was Olivia’s word dives into the etymology of words, phrases, or passing thoughts, things like our need to destroy cuteness, the expression ”what’s the matter?”, the word thrall. I expect some readers might find these distracting. Not me. I quite enjoyed them, in fact, as they were not only informative but contributed to the surrounding subject matter. Adolescence can be (was) a fraught time for many of us, male and female, featuring volcanic emotional angst even under normal conditions. Toss in the misery of your favorite parent disappearing, then falling in with a charismatic sort who is inspiring, compelling, and possibly dangerous, stir the cauldron with some specific sexual attractions, and a group of other teens coping with their own forms of madness, trying to overcome, or at least trying to gain some mastery over the weight of desire, the heavy load of becoming and maybe the clutches of gravity. And, in the telling, knowing that it will all go to hell in a terminal way. The Lightness is an engaging, coming-of-age suspense thriller that will make you smile, fret, wonder, and consider where limits lie. Not saying you will bang your head on the ceiling while reading this, but it may very well lift your literary spirits. No one saves us but ourselves - Buddha Review posted – June 12, 2020Publication dates----------June 16, 2020 - hardcover----------June 22, 2021 - trade paperback=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter, LinkedIn, and InstagrampagesEmily Temple is the managing editor at Literary Hub. The Lightness is her first novel. Other Writing by Temple-----Literary Hub - Emily Temple on Translating a Decade of Internet Writing into a Debut Novel -----All her stories in The Atlantic-----All her stories in Literary Hub-----All her stories in Refinery 29-----All her stories in Redef-----Links to other writing in her site-----A story by Temple - Plan of the Peak Cavern-----A story by Temple - Better Homes Items of Interest-----Wiki on Dhammapada-----The Dhammapada Full Text-----Tummo Meditation

Can we ever really know our parents, our friends? Can we ever really know what goes on in a relationship between two others? Where are the limitations of this human life, and what might be possible?The Lightness asks these questions in the form of a coming-of-age story that takes place in a Buddhist summer camp for teens. Each character is specific and alluring, yet ultimately unknowable. The central action takes place among a group of girls, yet their family circumstances are present in all they do. The Buddhist mind faces and accepts what truly is, and responds to this truth without judgment. These girls are fueled by their neuroses. How can they possibly see what is?Why did I love this book so much? The writing was excellent, yes. But I think it was the longing that really resonated with me: the longing for the unreachable, the impenetrable, the incomprehensible. Temple takes the bewildering teen years and adds layers of confusion by questioning the spiritual and mystical in the absence of adults. And through it all, you feel the longing for their guidance, love, and grounding. These girls are floating without an anchor.

Prologue “Once, not so long ago, a woman on the street told me my fortune. She said it was it was good news: I’d live a long life. I’d be happy. Bouncing babies, etc. I was passed thirty by then, and I’d had these things on my mind. But there was a catch (well, isn’t there always?): You’ll never get your good, long life if you keep asking the wrong questions, the woman said. I wanted to know: Which question is the right question? She passed my fingers between her palms, my palms between her fingers. She said, Not that one. But I was only teasing her. I knew which question to ask”. I liked much of this book- but I seriously felt it needed editing. And I’m not even one of those -‘editing-police-readers’. The following quote sold me instantly:“The Lighthouse” could be the love child of Donna Tartt and Tana French. but it’s savage. glittering magic is all Emily Temple”. FANTASTIC MARKETING.....just don’t know if it’s the truth! However.....Emily Temple ‘is’ a talented writer. This is a decent - often intriguing debut - but it didn’t hit the ball out of the park. But....there ‘were’ great moments. We visit the Levitation Center...There are ‘many’ sentences to pause and ponder throughout: “Girls love to be unlike other girls, because of the lies we are told about what other girls are like”. “Girls like us cannot be protected, we swore into one another’s palms and shoulder blades, girls like us cannot be saved. It’s the mistake everyone makes”. “Even then she kept crying, harder and harder, hoping he would come to her, and after some time her body twisted and spread, her unmoving feet grew into the ground and her untouched, unloved skin crusted over and she became an enormous tree. You can see her from here, girls: The weeping willow that still hangs over the cliff’s edge”. “At school, I told my classmates that I was a Buddhist— how my mother would’ve raged, had she known— but I couldn’t tell them exactly what that meant. But what do you actually do? They asked, obedient churchgoers all. We meditate, I said. So it’s just sitting around, they said. No, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t explain”. “That’s Ava, she said”“Ava?”“Avalokitesvara, she said”. “Named after the bodhisattva, the personification of perfect compassion”. It was summer. All the girls were sick with desire.....either for friendships, acceptance, their parents, or Luke, the steamy gardener, The girls wanted beliefs, transcendence. It was a summer of religious inquiry... spiritual inquiry...wanting enlightenment, wanting release, wanting connection. “Now I prefer not to want. It is much more dignified. I guess I turned out to be a Buddhist after all” A little too long - But... there is beauty on every page....It’s the type of book that needs to be digested slowly....“I’m in love with the world through the eyes of a girl”3.5 - rating up Thank you HarperCollins, Netgalley and Emily Temple

Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.Olivia has left her mother and the secrets they share at home. Following in her father's disappearing footsteps, she journeys to the Levitation Center, a meditation retreat that hosts troubled girls from across the globe every Summer. This was the last known location of her father and she hopes to find where he ventured from here.Olivia is not one of the camp's 'bad girls', yet she might long to be. As she looks for what she knows she is missing, she finds she is lacking far more than she ever previously admitted to herself. And more than fathers can be found and gained in such a place as this, especially when the mysterious trio of girls who linger at the camp's peripheries shift to make room for one other.I adore books that feature the intricacies and toxicity of certain close-knit teenage friendship groups, such as this one. The heightened emotions, the unreliability of character, and the ensuing drama all suck me in as assuredly as it does the new girl who enters their midst. There is something whimsical and innocent as well as feral and viscous about their thoughts and deeds, and I can not get enough of them!Here, these wild girls become preoccupied with certain aspects of the Buddhist religion and spend their hours of moonlight pushing themselves, and each other, to the brink of human possibility. This is all in aid of the greatness they know lurks within, and a banishment of the average they deem lurks around them.The dream-like quality infused in each lyrical line and the heady atmosphere that coated all action it depicted combined to make this an evocative and haunting piece. This was part Girls on Fire and part The Furies, with the essence of The Girls and the ambience of The Secret History sprinkled throughout. I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, Emily Temple, and the publisher, The Borough Press, for this opportunity.

Read this in one sitting, could not put it down. Finishing the book felt like walking out of an engrossing movie, stunned. I wasn't sure if it was for me from the description or when I first started reading because there were indicators that it may read a bit like a young adult novel (the mention of "Buddhist Boot Camp For Bad Girls" is an example). If it seems the same way to you, keep reading, it will surprise you. It is clever, complex, dark, and deep. A story about belonging and what someone might do to find it, through family, friendship, and faith. Congrats to Emily Temple on a wonderful debut.

This is quite smart. Review TK

This book will change all your preconceived notions about what good writing is. Like the cover promises, it will blow your freaking mind.Sometimes when I read a book I think to myself "Wow, I can write a book like this, I can one day make this happen." I'm happy. I'm content. I feel like it's a real possibility. Well, this book is a real dream smasher. It says "Don't quit your day job, idiot."I don't care how many monkeys and how many typewriters are in a room. There is no way something like this is written without some seriously elevated IQ levels. And I was going into it early on thinking that it was a four star read, since it reminded me so much of "Bunny" by Mona Awad, which was also a brilliantly sardonic, engrossing read about some elitist girls struggling to attain their idealistic goals and hurting people in the process. But it's so much more than that. It's an arrangement of words and sentences that are unfathomable. Sometimes I would stop and think "Wow, I need this sentence put into a poster for my wall so everyday I can look at it and feel some semblance of comfort that there are other people out there with this level of divine intellect taking care of the world, making it a better place, and that I can sit here and watch my Netflix and just stay out of their way." I'm doing my part.Oh, and I will also never eat chili again.

Gorgeous, compelling, richly textured. Like reading Megan Abbott doing Renata Adler, only even more original and electric than that. I loved this book.

If there is any justice in the literary world, this spellbinding novel will be one of the most acclaimed debuts of 2020. Darkly stylish, full of verve, acerbic wit, and shimmering intelligence, Temple’s debut is a mesmeric and unflinching exploration of adolescent female friendship and awakened sexual desire, as well as a fiery meditation on the obliterative nature of unwavering faith. Perhaps most impressively for a debut (for any novel, in fact): every sentence sings. If Donna Tartt rewrote The Craft as a novel, it might look something like this fierce, extraordinary work.

Set largely across one balmy summer, The Lightness follows Olivia as she enrols herself in a program for troubled girls at a meditation retreat high in the mountains. With her father having attended the same retreat just before he disappeared, Olivia hopes understanding his Buddhist passions will help her feel closer to him – and perhaps even to figure out why he never returned home. Quickly befriending a small group of enigmatic outcasts, the girls become increasingly obsessed with proving true the rumour that it’s possible to levitate, taking you one step closer to true enlightenment.This is one of those books that I don’t want to say much about, because despite a few quietly powerful revelations along the way, not a huge amount actually happens. Instead, the success of the novel is reliant on the brilliant execution of its atmosphere; one of disorientating adolescence and mounting, claustrophobic tension that swell towards an inevitable though no less thrilling climax.The novel is told in first person, with an older Olivia recalling the summer in question. This is effective on a number of fronts, allowing for a more mature narrative voice, greater self-reflection, and an omniscience that permits the laying out of clues that lend the whole thing a sense of impending doom – keeping us hooked despite the relatively slow progression of events.There are lots of fascinating themes at play, from the trappings of the female body, to the often fine line between love and rivalry in friendship. As secrets are revealed, the reasons why the girls may wish to escape the physical confines of their bodies become tragically apparent, with subtle plays for power revealing the hidden manipulations and selfish motivations that can drive us to betray our own.Though the ending is a little heavy on exposition, The Lightness is a tense and hypnotic read throughout. At once melancholic and strangely hopeful, it explores the allure of faith, and the desperate measures some of us will take to find purpose and belonging.Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

oh i had SUCH a good time with this onethe monstrosity and savagery of teenage girlhood!!this is a book that is very self-conscious of the homage it's paying to the secret history & i really enjoyed that. why pretend your book is inspired by something else? there's even a slight reference to bunny being found after the snow melted in the final few pages which made me smile.i'd rec this to anyone looking for a bit of the TSH magic (weird cliques, isolated settings, annoying narrators) or anyone that enjoyed sweetbitter by stephanie danler (the hook of a personality, blind belief, conflict re male and female desires).cw: suicide, self-harm, addiction, sexual abuse, child abuse, disordered eating.

As a big fan of Emily Temple’s content on Literary Hub (and of the site in general), I was excited for the release of her first novel. The Lightness does not disappoint, it is a largely successful debut. At times haunting and mysterious - others philosophical and tender - The Lightness is always intelligent. It also wears its largest inspiration on its sleeve, that being Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Through her content on Lit Hub, Emily’s love for Tartt’s classic is no secret and it really shines through here. I was delighted to also detect traces of Mona Awad’s Bunny, (that may be totally subjective) one of my favorites from last year. In my opinion, Temple strikes a really nice balance between the dense introspectiveness of The Secret History and the batshit crazy supernatural darkness of Bunny. The result is much softer than either of those two, more subtle and breezy than either but still satisfyingly dark and introspective. I appreciated the tempo and pacing much more than Secret History; the nuance much more than Bunny. All things considered, I would absolutely recommend this to fans of either of those two novels and/or contemporary literature in general. Here’s to hoping Emily continues to produce novels, would love to see where she goes next.

"Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in the dead-calm sea. Desires round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls."Anne Carson, "Short Talks"---Emily Temple managed to write a novel made up of short (a few paragraphs at the most) segments of plot interspersed with shorter segments of facts relevant to the story (or quotes, or etymology), and have me hooked from beginning to end. I intend to fully steal her writing style in this review, adding a few quotes from poems that explore the same themes that The Lightness does. Literally just because I can. Because I slept four hours tonight. Take your pick.---review (n.)mid-15c., "an inspection of military forces," from Middle French reveue "a reviewing, review," noun use of fem. past participle of reveeir "to see again, go to see again."---The Lightness is a book about girls. Girls who are no peaches, girls with teeth like wolves, girls who go missing, girls who do not want to be found. Fragmented, reminiscent, it reminded me less of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and more of Maggie Nelson's Bluets, but in novel form. I do see the similarities to TSH, especially in the plot, but it borrowed much less from Tartt than most books that get labeled as "dark academia" do.To me, it was reminiscent of many things I have read before, but not in the way I was expecting. It explored girlhood, religion, beauty, and desire in a way that was both intriguing and well-researched. As in, Emily Temple knows what she is talking about! While the prose was at times a bit much for me, the hinting at the dark ending too heavy, etc, I generally find the relaxed writing style worked well. ---In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.When I walkI part the airand alwaysthe air moves into fill the spaceswhere my body's been.We all have reasonsfor moving.I moveto keep things whole."Keeping Things Whole" by Mark StrandFrom The Lightness: "I have never in my life come across a beautiful image without deciding to force myself into it. I can't help it—show me a pretty patch of flowers and I'll immediately sit down in its center, so all the stems break beneath me, so all the petals smear and fold, but at least for that moment I am part of it."---Ultimately, I liked this. I would recommend it if you like reading about girls and their desires. I would not recommend it if you easily find things cheesy or over-the-top. Going to try to catch a few more hours of sleep now. Maybe dream of black sand.

what a book....what a haunting and primal book. i'm teetering between a 4 and a 5 here, but i'm settling on a 5 for one reason alone: i think i will find myself drawn to this book, over and over again, for many years to come. i cannot imagine the things that i missed, or how much there would be left to re-discover, re-interpret, re-feel if i read it again.temple has created such a beautiful, disquieting, honest and raw look at female desire. one of the best depictions of the female self-gaze i've seen in a novel. so many of the lines in this book blew me back, and even if i never felt a real sense of the characters, i ultimately liked that. they were their own mysteries. it took me some time, but it deserved my patience.this book operated on so many levels. the prose was so smooth, so luscious, it was like butter, like water, so easy to read and get swept up by. it was a fairy-tale, it was a mystery, it was a character study, it was a reflection paper, it was a dictionary, it was all this and more. it is something for each reader to discover on their own.i cannot wait to read whatever emily temple does next, and then read it again.

Psychologist Nicki Crick coined the term 'relational aggression', to define adolescent female aggression, in which young girls tend to weaponise their relationships as a substitute to physical violence. Films such as Heathers and Mean Girls explore this subject in the high school setting. Emily Temple's debut novel revisits this narrative in a Buddhist retreat for troubled girls. The girls in Temple's novel are driven by a goal: levitation. With escalating attempts at achieving 'lightness' - implying both 'weightlessness' in order to float or levitate and 'enlightenment'- they navigate young female friendship and rage. I love this novel particularly for its love for teenage girls. This world of social hierarchies, bullying, and exclusion, is familiar to many of us. Temple's version, however, treats the misunderstood teenage girls with empathy. It urges us, as readers, to look kindly upon that time in our lives.

I expect nothing but the best from an author who works as an editor at Lithub.com and Emily Temple doesnt disappoint. She nails the concept of a cultlike environment in a way that had me reminisci g about my own high years at a Christian school that was attached to a cult like church. Lightness is not always achieved by learning to levitare and enlightenment comes with surviving or having life experiences and with that comes wisdom. Olivia's journey through the summer is truthful and scary at times with the clique of Serena, Janet and Laurel. An excellent book a great summer read for adults and teens. Five stars from me and thanks to William Morrow for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I've been wanting to read this book since it came out this summer and I vowed to myself that I would pick it up before year's end. The story takes place a Buddhist Summer Camp for Bad Girls and centers around a group of teenage girls who are seeking enlightenment through levitation. The comparisons to Donna Tartt's The Secret History are apt for this book but imagine if you had also been getting a beginner's lesson in Buddhism. I enjoyed how Temple wove her story through with lessons from Buddhism and other popular eastern "self-help" methods that have made it to the western world to be commercialized. It is clear that Temple did her research and though I did enjoy the interludes they, at times, also detracted from my enjoyment of the story. I wanted a little more plot at moments and a little less history lesson.Overall, though, this is a really interesting book. She managed to take the classic dark academia/teenage girl/cult story and put a new spin on it with smart commentary throughout. I definitely look forward to more from her.

“At the moment of the truly unbearable, I once heard someone say, you can’t help but change form.”introspective and clever. this book was a compelling coming-of-age story dealing with friendship, love, and faith, and i admired the skillful writing and how emily temple explores all these topics. i wasn't particularly in love with any of the characters, but, at the same time, i wanted to keep reading and find out what would happen. not much happened in this book, but a lot happened? idk it was like. very backstory-heavy and focused a lot on olivia's childhood and tying that into her interactions with the main clique of girls which i enjoyed. this review isn't making much sense, but i enjoyed this book despite not fully falling in love with it and look forward to picking up whatever emily temple writes next.