the magic of adolescence, desire, and levitation
The Lightness by Emily Template (playlist included)
Welcome! Today we’re reading The Lightness by Emily Temple, published in June 2020. This is a re-read for me, and a re-visit to my original “review”, which I never got around to sharing…oops!
I read Emily Temple’s The Lightness in February 2021, and wrote most of this newsletter soon after. Yes, that was 2 whole years ago, and I’m only just now sending it out! I tend to abandon things once they start to feel pointless, so this got lost in the drafts. However, in order to overcome my perfectionist/procrastinating tendencies, I decided I’d just finish it anyways. Plus, it gave me an excuse to re-read the book.
I really loved The Lightness when I first read it. It was such a fun, nostalgic sort of read for me. A coming-of-age-story about a group of teen girls dead-set on achieving “the lightness”, it explores the intensity of friendship between teen girls, and the intense desire of adolescence.
I initially gave it 5 stars (my star ratings are based on nothing to be honest), and I even considered it a favorite for a moment. So I was really looking forward to reading it again.
This time around, I listened to the book on audio. [Let me preface this by saying, I rarely listen to audiobooks, because they really just don’t work well with my brain.]
Unfortunately, I liked it…a lot less this time. I think it’s a mix of the narration, not being able to engage as deeply through audio, and simply being a little bit older/in a different mindset about what I read. I think coming-of-age stories are pretty hit-or-miss once you get older, and you just have to be in the right headspace to really enjoy it.
Despite that, I still have fond memories of my first reading, and I recommend it for anyone who is in a coming-of-age stage (or a super nostalgic stage).
Note: Most of what’s below was written after my first reading, around 2 years ago. I decided to leave it as is for the most part, since it better encapsulates the novel and its highlights. I don’t have anything particularly critical to say now, it just doesn’t resonate with me the same way.
Table of Contents
Quick thoughts
Playlist
Synopsis
Notes & Quotes
Literary Connections
Book Recommendations
Final Thoughts
Quick Thoughts
This book is: The Secret History meets The Craft meets New Age spirituality.
This is the kind of book that makes you want to stay up late reading under the covers with nothing but a flashlight to illuminate the words. I want to live in this little world as long as possible, and feel the magic of being a teen again.
Playlist
I made a playlist inspired by the book. Listen to it HERE while reading this newsletter and/or while reading the book. Or just listen to it because it’s fun!
Synopsis
A year after Olivia's dad disappears, she arrives at "The Levitation Center", a new age spirituality retreat up in the mountains (the last place she knew him to be), for a summer program designed to reform "Bad Girls". The girls spend their days meditating, doing chores around the grounds, and taking classes.
Olivia is immediately drawn to a mysterious girl, Serena with long black hair, who seems to be above the rules (she rarely attends classes or activities), and her two friends, Janet and Laurel. She watches them in the early days, desperately wanting to be part of their group. Soon enough, she's invited to join them late at night for what they call The Feeling, aka The Lightness.
Serena, as the unofficial leader of the group, suggests they spend the summer learning how to do something she's been trying to do for years: she wants to levitate. As they embark on their secret education, the story explores the intimacy of female friendship, burgeoning sexuality, and the power all girls crave as they move into womanhood.
Reading Notes and Quotes
First Line
Once, not so long ago, a woman on the street told me my fortune.
The book begins with the narrator, who is now is her early thirties, telling us about the summer of her sixteenth year.
Disappear
disappear (v.) from dis- “do the opposite of” + appear “come into view,” from the Old French aparoir, aperer
“come to light, come forth”; see also: vanish, die out, abandon; see also: no letter, no call; see also: a year and more without a single message to your daughter, who is wondering what could have happened, who is alone with her furious mother, and who misses you.
Olivia is dealing with the disappearance of her father. She came to the Levitation Center with the hope of finding out why he never came back.
Bad Girls
So the girls at the Center were trouble. I knew that going in. 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 their 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, looking out at the smeared reflections of the streetlights, making plans instead of wishes. They were girls who ran away, who inked their own arms with needles and ballpoint pens, who got things pierced below the neck.
The summer program at the center is for bad girls. How easy it is to be bad when so little is considered good. Being a teenage girl doesn’t leave you with much space to explore, to learn, to desire, to exist. Seeking independence, coming into your own, is enough to make you bad.
Power
the appeal of levitation was obvious to me. Every girl wants more from the world. Every girl wants magic, to transcend the mundanity of her life. Every girl wants power.
Our attempts to gain control over ourselves, our bodies, our lives often comes out in the most destructive forms. It rarely feels within our reach, no matter how old we get.
Ritual
Girls, on the other hand, are master idolaters. They are like Catholics in that way, or Satanists—all gilded shrine and ceremony, all theme and ritual and symbol. They hunger for the gaudy trappings of faith.
There is a ritual to the inner-workings of any group of teen girls. Olivia worshipped Serena, Janet, and Laurel before being allowed in, to take part in the magic.
Want
We were all sick with want that summer, stupid with it. I wanted Luke. I wanted Serena. I wanted my father. I wanted belief. I wanted transcendence…
I think this is what disturbs me most about religious seekers, as a group—they want so badly, so obviously. They want enlightenment, they want release, they want connection…
Now I prefer not to want. It is much more dignified. I guess I turned out to be a Buddhist after all.
Wanting is intoxicating, it is scary, and it leaves you open to being hurt or disappointed. It leaves you grasping. This feeling is especially intense at 16, when everything is out of reach.
Levitation
Now I keep a Post-it with the definition of levitation above my paper-strewn desk:
Levitation (n.) to rise by virtue of lightness, from the Latin levitas (lightness itself).
The lightness, the feeling of being empty, the hunger, the desire…isn’t that everything we feel during adolescence?
Literary Connections
Emily Temple’s writing reminds me quite a lot of Stephanie Danler’s, now that I think about it. It’s evocative and sensorial, with the same kind of intensity. The protagonists in both The Lightness and Sweetbitter are bursting with feelings, but trying to hold them in. And as I’ve said in reference to Danler too, I know this writing style doesn’t work for everyone.
This story also makes me think about Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. It has a lot of the same themes (coming-of-age, intense friend groups, obsession with beauty, seeking knowledge or enlightenment in potentially-dangerous ways), though in a different environment. And I know Temple is a fan of TSH, so it’s clear that it had some influence on her novel.
I personally love both books mentioned, so it’s not surprising that I initially loved this one too.
Book Recommendations
If you like this book (or the sound of it), here are some more books you might like.
Final Thoughts
I may feel less connected to this book now, but I can still appreciate it. Especially after re-reading some of the passages I highlighted 2 years ago—I found that reading Temple’s sentences actually drew me back in quite quickly. I really think if I had read my physical copy instead of listening to it, I would have loved it this time too.
Mostly because nostalgia is a strong drug.
While I don’t miss most things about being a teen girl—the competitiveness, the insecurity, the feeling of powerlessness—there is a mix of intensity and innocence that’s hard not to think I miss. This book is an ode to all those feelings: the confusion, the curiosity, the desire, the desperation.
Despite my mixed review (sorry, it’s really hard to combine both reading experiences into one review), I do recommend this if it interests you. I’m actually surprised it didn’t get more notice in certain realms of booksta-gram, but maybe it did when I wasn’t looking!
Thanks for reading today’s issue of Empty Head. More (coherent) reviews and bookish things are coming soon.
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