Book Review: Jardine Libaire’s White Fur Is Writer’s Excellence
Jardine Libaire’s White Fur could easily fall into the classic category of “boy falls for girl and girl falls for boy, but class divides them.” Literature has always been written according to love stories where a couple was torn between opposite sides of society’s tracks. Yet, Jardine Libaire’s writing is ANYTHING but typical.
Libaire has an unmatchable gift of building a space. From the beginning of White Fur, you feel like a fly in Elise’s and Jamey’s life. The author’s capacity to describe their souls and surroundings are so raw, you might think you know them better you know yourself. She completely exalts that a spirit is endless in its capacity to feel and do, which is why you understand how these two lovebirds crash.
While her writing style is very particular, White Fur is not the “newest” of love stories. Drugs, sex, class, and the naivety/ anxiety of being young tears apart, repairs, and tears apart again a couple that does not fully understand how to quit or build the other. They are like two hearts that are elated to be together, but completely ignore that they have been placed in a blender. We all have read the “rollercoaster” love stories; where two partners go up and down while holding their hands away from their safety belt. Yet, again, it is Libaire’s writing that revamps this “old tale” into a newness that enraptures you, and helps you analyze why we choose to love those that makes us hate ourselves.
When we first meet Jamey, he is rich, young, and in Yale. Life is going to be wonderful to/for him, and he never has faced even a quarter of the challenges that Elise Perez has in her life. This young woman is sardonic in her street smarts, and could rip heads off with her witty bite and teethed bitterness, which is why you wonder why Jamey wants to be loved by her and vice versa. Elise both loves and hates Jamey’s innocence for never knowing “the struggle”, and having the option to DECIDE to know it. It is like when a rich kid decides to travel and volunteer in a third world country; although charity is welcomed, it is still off-putting to know that poverty can be a self-gratifying vacation for someone. For Elise, the world he is choosing to enter, technically her own, is his chosen downgrade and one she wants to escape. It is in this truth, you feel they will never be happy.
If you find yourself saying, “If only the world could not be in my relationship, then I could have it, happily!”; then I say to you that, “Your relationship has always been in the world, but it will never be in happiness!” You cannot separate yourself from the world because you are, literally, on it, which is why you feel so torn for Elise and Jamey. The moments when they are isolated from the vivid madness of 80’s America/ NYC, there is a connection between them, of which comes off like tiny breathes within the story. Yet, the other instances are gasps from two people trying to save their pairing, which has turned their dreams into delusions and left them drowning in what they thought was love’s quench. I highly recommend White Fur just on the mere face that Jardine Libaire is one of the picturesque writers you will ever read. Click Here To Buy.
