I remember when I bought this book the bookshop's clerk told me it was one of her favorite books; she sounded happy someone else was interested in reading it and I was glad she was telling me this because I was in part afraid of the book's length, and the enthusiasm of her words made me eager to read it.

I started it on May. I was captivated by the Incandenza's children, Hal most of all. I was supremely confused with the many characters and things that didn't make sense yet. I got to the Eschaton part and I kept going, unconvinced. I read everywhere you had to keep going, going, going, but I was on the page 450 and I still wasn't convinced. I put it aside around July.
But the characters wouldn't leave me. I still had Hal's intellectual musings in my head, Orin's strange means of seduction, Mario's ingenuity. I read some more books and I finally picked it up again on August while reading North and South -which wasn't doing it for me at the time and the idea of IJ now suddenly looked appealing.
And then, at long last, the book started to fall together. I fell in love with every part, with every character that before I hadn't really payed attention to. I felt silly and sad that there were so many good parts I may've lost. But it didn't matter because there were still many good parts to come. I loved every character -yes, even Lenz-, with their own pathos that's so alike everyone else's but still unique in each of them. I wanted to cry my heart out for Mario's love to Hal, for Hal's anhedonic state, for Gately's complicated life and ultimately desire to be good no matter what; for the sadness that surrounded every Incandenza: Avril's desperate love and infinite patience for her children, her inability to see through Orin's lies -or do something about it-; Jim's suffering to be understood, to find a reason to live, to feel happy, to find something that made him closer to Hal; Orin's loneliness and cry for love that he couldn't find, his complicated relationship with his mother; Mario's confusion about people, his worry for Hal's imminent sadness; Hal's hollowness, his life laid out in front of him and his inability to do something about it, to feel, to let himself and his desires be heard.
I fell in love with Gately and his devotion for Joelle -with her own complicated life troubles and insecurities-, with his dreams, with his previous life that had ultimately condemned him to who he was and his desperation to change, to be strong.
Stice, Pemulis, Marathe, Pat M., C. T. Davis, Ewell, Green... God, so many characters with such detailed lives and things I won't ever be able to forget.

I'm sad it took me some time to catch up, to understand everything, to see how human this book is. I'm sad it's over, so suddenly, so unexpectedly. I feel like I could be reading about these characters for years, my whole life; I wouldn't mind.
How come such a wonderful mind was gone so fast? How come he's affecting us still these days and he won't even know it? It breaks my heart.