Review: Holier Than Thou by Laura Buzo

Title: Holier Than Thou 

Author: Laura Buzo 

Rating: 4.5 Stars 

If I'm to be perfectly honest, I still don't know what to say about this novel. While I didn't love it the way I did Buzo's debut, Good Oil (now published in America under the title Love and Other Perishable Items), I feel as if I've come out of this book with a new-found respect for Laura Buzo and a wiser, more contemplative, and almost whole feeling. In so many ways, Holier Than Thou completes me. It's hard to say why, but it just does.

Holier Than Thou is one of those novels that you either love or hate. It either resonates with you or simply falls flat for it is one of those stories that pulls at your heartstrings if you're able to truly connect with it. Although I'm not the targeted audience of this novel, being a couple years under the mid-twenties Holly Yarkov of this piece, I found that it moved me beyond words. In her world, Holly is labeled as a "Woman of Steel." In other words, a survivor. Not only has she gotten through the slow, dragging, and painful death of her father, but she has experienced a love that never culminated and ultimately got away. Now, Holly is undergoing the slap-in-your-face reality that her friends from high school are moving on without her, that her job is not quite what she thought it would be, and that living with your boyfriend in your own apartment doesn't necessarily mean you get to see him all that much. 

Buzo's sophomore piece is a very slow-moving and character-driven tale. It takes awhile to get to the meat of the story for Holly is a character with plenty of barriers, yet incredibly endearing and like-able at the same time. Holly is an observer; she loves to watch the lives of those around her and gain simple pleasures from their happiness. Holly is a do-gooder; she's the glue that has somehow managed to keep her friends together for so long. Yet, Holly can't help but look back, help but try to observe and analyze and try to find where it all went wrong. It could have started with Liam, the boy Holly crushed on in high school, the boy who grew to become close friends with Holly, the boy who could have been Holly's Mr. Right, until he wasn't. It could have started with her father, with the fact that she was always her father's daughter and now, with him gone, she didn't quite have a place in the family anymore. Or did it start with Nick, the co-worker who somehow makes her laugh and smile despite her desolate days and whose relationship status in her life is become increasingly blurred? 

Holier Than Thou is realistic. It's gutting, it transports you back in time and it makes you feel as if you yourself are Holly, going through her struggles, her job, her life. It is achingly bittersweet and it isn't an easy book to read at times, simply because everything feels so very real. I can't imagine not feeling like Holly herself during this novel and her journey as the story progresses, the mistakes she makes, the people she meets, the wrongs she has to right...it all seems so familiar somehow. Holier Than Thou is a novel that brings back memories, that triggers nostalgia, and makes you look to the future as well. I, personally, am at the stage in my life where I look at my friend circle and wonder which one of us will keep in touch, which one of us will move on, which one of us will even care in a few years. I am at the stage in my life where I can't fathom one career being wholly satisfactory, where I can see myself losing interest in any job I may pursue, and where I can see my future crumbling apart just as Holly's has. 

Yet, the message of this novel isn't desolation. It's hope. For, you see, I never saw Holly as a Woman of Steel. Not for much of this novel. It is at the end of the story, when she is picking up all the broken pieces and still persevering on and doing what she thinks is right despite her mistakes and the mistakes of others, that Holly becomes a Woman of Steel. It is now that she has faced her past, her fears, her hopes, her dreams, and come to realize that life moves on no matter what, that she is strong. 

I guess that's how I'd sum up Holier Than Thou. LIFE. Since really, that's all life is, right? A continuous train of gains and losses, happiness and sadness, excitement and nostalgia, THE ultimate dose of bittersweet...Yet, it's that ambiguous ending that truly takes my breath away when it comes to this novel. I know a lot of people keep saying it keeps you in the dark, but it DOESN'T. It's like Good Oil. Buzo builds these characters that are so real and tangible and palpable and it's like she's testing you at the end - how well do you really know them? Since, honestly, the pieces are all there - you just need to put them together. When you consider Holly, her actions, her personality, the ending no longer becomes AS ambiguous. It's all kind of stunning in its perfect puzzle-piece-like quality in fact. 

I can't fully articulate why I loved this novel, but I did. Laura Buzo is one of those authors I can always trust to never let me down. If this is the New Adult genre, then yes, I want more. But, mostly, I just want Laura Buzo to keep writing such masterpieces; such beautiful pieces of literature that just take my breath away, make my heart stop, and make me laugh and cry at the same time, just like the bittersweet bundle they are themselves.