A Mango-Shaped Space

I actually read this book over the summer and really loved it. It made my heart melt and never before had I cried so much at the end of a book. (Okay fine, a few tears were running down my face)

I found this when I went "Midnight Amazon Surfing" one night. I had entered the name of a book I really liked and looked at the "Customers Who Bought This Also Bought" section. I think A Mango-Shaped Space was the only one I was interested in.

But now I seriously curse myself for quickly reading the summary and concluding that it was about some girl with mental issues that was trying to make the world see her as normal. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

I read the original and not the reprint edition this time.

Here's what the cover looks like.

There's a quote from this book that goes with the cover too. "Everyone I knew thought we named our cat Mango because of his orange eyes. But I named him Mango because everything about him was just so orange and yellow."

Mia's brain works very differently from those of other people. She can see colors every time she hears things. She's afraid of being called abnormal so she keeps it inside. Only one member of her family knows about this and it is her best friend and pet cat Mango whom she talks to about her problems. But when her condition gets out of control, she finally tells her family. Right away she is taken to a neuroscientist that determines that she has synesthesia, a rare condition in which certain neurons are connected to the "wrong" parts of the brain.

After joining a social network for people with the same condition, she realizes that she isn't alone and that there are many people in the world just like her. Mia also discovers that she isn't strange, but in fact very special in her own way.

My thoughts-

This is really one of my favorite realistic fiction books. Probably because it just seems so real. Mia was an ordinary kid, but she had an extraordinary talent that set her apart from everyone else. Wendy Mass writes this very beautifully and you can tell every minute detail about what her characters are feeling and why.

The way the ending turned out was a surprise, but I had begun loving all the characters so much that it was terrible. Mia's love for Mango was so deep that well, when it happened I was very sad too. This book connected with me and I was obsessed with it. 

Sometimes I wish they had made a movie out of it. Now I know they shouldn't have because condensing the story into two hours would end up leaving out all the beautiful details and "less important" parts of the story.

In short, this is one of the best books I have ever read. It's probably second to Ender's Game but still it was amazing.