I believe that's what most writers want—to share an experience that adds complexity to life and resonates with something someone hasn't been able to say yet.
If the writing process is healing, and if this healing process shapes the narrative, then maybe the reading experience can stimulate aspects of the same healing process.
From the early pages of the novel, she laments, “It’s a different story for rich girls, they have their ways,” which is a very elegant way of throwing one’s arms up and shouting that it isn’t fair to a world that won’t hear it.
. . . There is a lot of horror and horrible things about it, but there is also a lot of grace and things that show how strong people can be. It’s really the whole gamut of humanity.
In one of Solomon’s early lessons, he pushes Archy toward thoughts of his own mortality for the first time before offering religion as a solution to existential dread.