Woolf’s mind was truly ahead of her time. I rarely cry while reading, but Chapter 4 completely broke me. I felt choked, then sobbed, overwhelmed by how powerful and unfair the reality she describes is. When she speaks of women writers and the lives denied to them, it feels unbearably personal.

And yet, this book is not only grief, it is encouragement. When Woolf urges future generations of women to work, to write, to seize the world, it honestly felt like she was speaking directly to me.

Her voice crosses decades with clarity and urgency.

This is not a book you finish and forget. It is one I know I will return to again and again.

I’ve always thought Convenience Store Woman feels like the younger sibling of The Vegetarian. Both are about women minding their own business, living exactly how they want, and everyone else absolutely losing their minds over it.

The pain is precise. It’s not radical in the way The Vegetarian is. It’s.. ethical? The book wants you to sit the fuck down with it. They want silence. They want us to endure and witness that the dead remain dead while the living remain marked.

At least she’s no longer explaining herself and no longer negotiating her body for other’s comfort.

People confuse this kind of reading with darkness. It’s not.

I’m not saying I’m into nihilism or destruction but I’m allergic to false compromise.

I’d rather see: a woman choose extinction than compliance, a life pared down to its truth than padded with lies, an ending that closes cleanly, even if it’s brutal.

It’s freedom in the most radical painful way.

isabel doesnt asked to be understood, lives in restraint like oxygen, and also mireads ppl on purpose. but she’s also unapologetically decisive. lmao love her for that. shes my girl. shes my anti wishy washy heroine. this is the yuri i need