Story of Your Life

By Ted Chiang

My Rating: 5/5

Genre: Sci Fi

Finished on: 23rd May, 2021

The Story Of Your Life

By Ted Chiang  

One fine day me and my sister were choosing which movie to watch on weekend, and as anyone might guess from reading this review, it was the Arrival. Which is based on this book.

I watched the movie, loved every bit of it, and there was absolutely no way I was missing out on a chance to read the book upon finding out the movie was based on it.

So, here we are. 

I had always been fascinated with time travel theories. And the concept in this one simply blew my mind. This book didn't just mess with time, but it ALSO made us all realize the beauty of being multi lingual. It introduced the concept of Sapir Whorf hypothesis! Or in other words Linguistic Relativity.

Just. Simply. Amazing.

____________

There were slight differences in the book and movie. 

In the movie we had to use our brains to find out what's really happening. But, in the book there's a huge spoiler right in the beginning. And since this review will be based on the book, I'll be in sync with the book's plot and then point out the similarities and differences which were present in the movie.

So the first major difference in the book (which also became a huge spoiler as well) was about her daughter's death AND the fact that she (the narrator, who is ALSO the mother) knew this (about her daughter's death) before she even conceived her.

I know, I know. The sentence might sound confusing.

Knowing this before she even conceived? That's.. fortune telling right? 

Nope, not quite. It's entirely different than whatever assumptions you are making right now.

She knowing about her daughter's death beforehand was a straight up spoiler.

HOW she dies was the major major difference here compared to the movie.

In the movie her daughter dies from Cancer.

In book she dies from an accident.

And THIS book, is a lot of things, for sure, but at the end it's ALSO the story of HER life. The daughter's life.

Or let's say in the words of the narrator - The Story Of Your Life

I'm not even sure how to narrate the story. It'll be equivalent to narrating a narration, if that'll make any sense?

So the story (or the narration) begins with the mother being in the present, knowing about her daughter's death in the coming future.

I'll not elaborate on what happens (yet) as it's going to be a major part of what this entire book is about.

So in the beginning we know one thing. While the mother mentions how her daughter is going to be 25 when they are going to get their most important phone call of their life, & post that they are going to go to the mountains rescue to see their daughter, the father here at present is asking the mother THE most important question, "Do you want to have a baby?"

She begins her narration while she ponders over this question. And here, the real story begins.

The call she'll get when her daughter is 25 was one of the most important phone call, the other important phone call is one which she'll be getting from the representative of US State dept. 

Needing her help with regards to her linguistic skills.

So the thing is, aliens from outer world have come to earth on their alien devices, and have stationed themselves in different parts of the world.

They have come in elliptically shaped craft, and in the movie they were named as Shells. But in the book they were called "Looking Glasses". In the movie there were only 12 such devices in total, but in the book there were 9 alone in US and 112 all over the world.

So why are the aliens here? Was the biggest question.

They had absolutely no idea. And there was no way to find out.

Because the aliens aren't here to conquer anything, or destroy the human species and the planet earth. They simply arrived and settled here quietly, without communicating anything else.

So this is where they need the main protagonist's help.

Louise Banks.

She's a linguist expert, and they thought out of the box and considered to call a linguist expert who can help in understanding the alien language and help in communicating with them.

Honestly, I was amaaazed.

This is just the beginning. The entire process of learning the new language left me speechless!

But let's take it one page at a time.

So they pick her. And also a physicist (the male protagonist) named Gary Donelly. And their job is to approach the aliens and simply find out what their purpose here on earth is.

So they both reach the Looking Glass...

"Once the looking glass was fully lit it resembled a life-size diorama of a semicircular room. The room contained a few large objects that might have been furniture, but no aliens."

At first the aliens don't appear, but eventually they do. They didn't seem alike as humans with arms and legs.

"Seven lidless eyes ringed the top of the heptapod's body. With eyes on all sides, any direction might as well be "forward."

They are not calling these creatures "alien" anymore. Now they call them Heptapod.

And as the narrator is explaining this, in the midst she'll suddenly switch and give us snippets about her life with the daughter she's going to have. It might not make sense now, but will do later.

And these snippets is what make you go ❤️

Her daughter is 5 in this one :)

        5: "Mom," you'll say, using the carefully casual tone reserved for requesting a favor, "can I ask you something?" 

        Mom: "Sure, sweetie. Go ahead." 

        Baby: "Can I be, um, honored?" 

        Mom: "What do you mean?" 

        Baby: "At school Sharon said she got to be honored." 

        Mom: "Really? Did she tell you what for?" 

        Baby: "It was when her big sister got married. She said only one person could be, um, honored, and she was it." 

       Mom: "Ah, I see. You mean Sharon was maid of honor?" 

       Baby: "Yeah, that's it. Can I be made of honor?"

🥺❤️

Coming back to the narration.

They needed a term to address the Heptapods. Since whatever they might respond will not be comprehensible to anyone, Louise names them Flapper and Raspberry.

Now this part of learning a new language had been amazing.

First they started with spoken words. They speak aloud one word pointing to an object, and they record their version of the word they use to represent that object.

Of course they might call each object differently, but at least they'd know what that "object" is called. And make out sentences whenever the same object is used in another sentence.

Next they moved on to written words. They point to an object, speak it out loud, and "write" down how they represent that object.

And the Heptapods do the same. This was done both for stationary objects and verbs. Louise made Gary walk, sit and eat, to know how the Heptapods would represent the same in their language.

And here comes the interesting part, when they saw the Heptapods "write" down the words for them.. it wasn't simply characters in an order. It was a diagram. Or you can call it a logogram.

And not just it, the logogram we see in certain languages, say Japanese or Arabic, words are written in a certain way (logograms) and then words are combined to form a certain sentence, but here..

"Their script isn't word-divided; a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. They join the logograms by rotating and modifying them."

Here their logograms are in the form of a circle.

Each word, is a circle. And to FORM a sentence, they merge all those words, to form an even more complex circle with design. Their logogram.

Trust me, it keeps getting more interesting.

"I wonder if it's a consequence of their bodies' radial symmetry: their bodies have no 'forward' direction, so maybe their writing doesn't either. Highly neat."

Louise here wonders, why the circular design? If you were new to this Heptapods language, where do you begin reading and where do you end? Then she tries to make the connection with the symmetry of their bodies. As mentioned in the beginning as well, Heptapods have eyes on all sides, and any direction might as well be forward for them. So does the same apply to their written language? Can it be "read" from any direction? 

But then in that case, remember how they started conversing? By pointing to an object and speaking the word out loud? In the words or sentences, something HAS to be spoken first in time, right?

Then how is their writing so different?

And there's another beautiful difference between the book and the movie. In the movie, we didn't get to know so many technical terms as we did in the book!

Consider Glottographic and Semasiographic writing. Ever heard of that? Me neither. But here Louise explains us their form of writing with these two terms.

Glottographic writing is our regular writing. What we SAY, we write.

It's that simple. It's the writing of speech. To put it simply.

Whereas, Semasiographic writing is something which indicates what we are trying to convey. Traffic signs, music notes are examples. You see those diagrams and you know what they indicate. And Louise believes Heptapods writing is Semasiographic writing. Their speech might be sequential but their writing is not. It's a logogram which somehow explains the entire sentence in one go.

At this point Louise actually starts understanding their writing too and explains Gary how their noun, verb change places as they are being the subject and object. But we don't want to go tooo technical now, do we? 

I'm already diving deep here more than what I had initially planned. 😂

Also Louise being the Linguist expert is obviously enjoying all this. But what's in it for Gary in this? He wonders. But Louise has an answer for that as well 

"I'll bet you that learning their two-dimensional grammar will help you when it comes time to learn their mathematical notation."

😂 She has got a point though, does she not?

I wish I could stop, but I just HAVE to add three more technical terms associated with the ones explained above. Not too detailed, I'll just be defining it.

Logogram - What was initially defined. It's a character which represents a word/phrase. Much like Chinese/Arabic writing.

Ideagram/Semagram - Both are almooost same (although they had different Google definitions), they are characters which represents ideas. And not a word/phrase. Much like the characters our Heptapods use. So yeah..

Anyway, this was me wanting to teach you certain linguistic terms which I had learnt while reading the book. You're welcome. :P

Moving on!

Since they combine their words and make the same logographic figure, the longer their sentence is, the more.. complex it gets.

"When a Heptapod B sentence grew fairly sizable, its visual impact was remarkable. If I wasn't trying to decipher it, the writing looked like fanciful preying mantids drawn in a cursive style, all clinging to each other to form an Escheresque lattice, each slightly different in its stance." Even bigger ones - psychedelic art.

And as they are learning all this, Louise almost perfected herself in learning their language, for which she was originally hired for.

So the BIG question remained.

Why are they here?

They asked this multiple times, and for this question the answer was different in both the book and the movie.

In book it was simply "to see", "to observe".

But in movie it was more dramatic, "offer weapon" 

I don't blame the movie, tbh. They need to have some drama now, do they not? 😂

This answer in the movie erupted chaos all around, where the countries started preparing for war.

And here in the book they were all simply frustrated, much like how a police officer would be if the prisoner isn't cooperating during interrogation and not giving the answers they would like to hear.

So let's continue with the book's plot. All this time you might be wondering Louise had some role here, trying to communicate with them, so what did Gary - the physicist - even do here?

Now here comes his part as well. And trust me, you're going to like this as well (oh unless you hate physics lol)

While Gary understands the way the Heptapods communicate when Louise is explaining to him, he brings a similar physics concept which explains Heptapods way of writing.

Fermat's Principle of Least Time.

This principle states, the path the light takes to go from one point to another is alwayss the shortest one.

Now in air, it's always a straight line, ofc. But say from air to a point under water, it deviates a certain angle to reach that point. And theoretically it's alwaays the shortest possible path.

Theory is explained here but the significance of it would be discussed a short while later!

Now this was the principle apparently the Heptapods responded to, and Louise is surprised about it.

"This thing goes on forever about Planck masses and the spin-flip of atomic hydrogen, and not a word about the refraction of light.".

Heptapods apparently might have a different definition of what's easy and what's not to them when it comes to concept of Physics.

I was so engrossed in these terms now that they mentioned "Louise's principle of least closet space" and I thought that's a legit principle out there which I haven't heard of yet. 🤦🏻‍♀️

And more on physics..

"The physicists were ultimately able to prove the equivalence of heptapod mathematics and human mathematics; even though their approaches were almost the reverse of one another, both were systems of describing the same physical universe."

They have the conversation about their writing again.

"No preferred order when reading the semagrams in a sentence; you could start almost anywhere in the nest, then follow the branching clauses until you'd read the whole thing. But that was reading; was the same true about writing?"

"That meant the heptapod had to know how the entire sentence would be laid out before it could write the very first stroke."

This was compared with the Arabic alphabet, how Bismillah is written as shown in the picture below

But even for that, it requires careful planning and heptapods do it for regular conversations!

And here they bring the Fermat's principle again..

Isn't it something like the light knows beforehand which path among the ones available would be the shortest, and light chooses to take that path? In other words, knowing the future beforehand and deciding to take that path?

Could Heptapods be communicating the same way? They know the entire context of what they are trying to convey, and they send it in one go, rather than one word at a time sequentially?

And as Louise is getting very familiar with the language, her entire thought process started changing. She even describes it..

"Heptapod B was changing the way I thought. I attended a total immersion program for learning Russian; by the end of the summer, I was thinking and even dreaming in Russian. But it was always spoken Russian."

She wonders, what if thoughts are non-phonological way? Louise had a friend born of deaf parents and grew up learning American Sign language, and he even thinks in ASL rather than English. 

How interesting?

Her thoughts started changing. She was able to see/imagine semagrams as Mandalas. She contemplates how premises and conclusions were interchangeable.

Mandalas

Imagining the complex logograms in your head, they start seeming like Mandalas as above.

And now comes THE most important part of the book which makes you wonder, what is even going on?!?

Louise and Gary are attending some boring video conference where the updates of theirs and other countries are being discussed regarding how much they have learnt. They are still trying to figure out what could it be that the Heptapods want. Louise and Gary are very bored listening it all over and over again...

But let's pause for a bit.

I've mentioned in the beginning there will be snippets of Louise and her daughter in the midst of the book, right? I had skipped in this review since they were randomly mentioned, not even in a proper chronological order. But let me just drop them all one by one now. 

Her daughter is 16:

We come to know Louise is dating Nelson. Nelson, who is NOT the father of her daughter.

We know one thing that Gary is the father.

So why is she dating Nelson? What even happens?

Her daughter is 14:

She goes to a party and gets very drunk

Her daughter is 6:

They go on a trip to Hawaii.

Her daughter is.. 21/22?

It's her college graduation. She's posing with her friends. Nelson is there, Gary as well with the woman HE is dating.

In this narration Louise is overwhelmed, as she recalls the stuff she did with the daughter who is now all grown up.

Louise knows what her daughter is going to pursue next. She is going to be a Financial Analyst. Her daughter is going to go for careers where she can negotiate good salary offers. Louise wouldn't understand why, but she says..

You'll do what makes you happy, and that'll be all I ask for.

❤️

Her daughter is 13:

Her daughter is exasperated to go to shopping with her Mom.

Her daughter is 1:

She's a babyy. A toddler. And her toddler stories are mentioned. How she learns how to walk.

The below quote of hers simply melts my heart

It'll be when you first learn to walk that I get daily demonstrations of the asymmetry in our relationship. You'll be incessantly running off somewhere, and each time you walk into a door frame or scrape your knee, the pain feels like it's my own. It'll be like growing an errant limb, an extension of myself whose sensory nerves report pain just fine, but whose motor nerves don't convey my commands at all. It's so unfair: I'm going to give birth to an animated voodoo doll of myself. I didn't see this in the contract when I signed up. Was this part of the deal?

Her daughter is 15:

She returns from her father's place. Gary's place. And apparently she gets a lecture from him about dating guys. The kind of guys she should be seeing/dating.

Overprotective dads :P

Now the following part.. is important

Her daughter is 14:

She comes to Louise, for some help with homework.

She needs help with a word she's not able to recall. It's used when both sides have a win-win situation. Or in other words, both sides have got nothing to lose.

Louise has some suggestions, but her daughter corrects that the word is little technical.

Louise is exasperated, why doesn't she simply ask her father if that's the case. Her daughter is upset. She doesn't go along well with her father. She turns to leave..

Now let me just come back to present. Remember Louise and Gary are attending a boring Video Conference right now? So in the discussion it is assumed that the Heptapods might be here for some sort of trade. But what can we humans on earth offer them?

Will they even offer us something in return? What can be offered so that both the sides are happy?

Hearing this Gary just blurts out, "You mean like a non-zero-sum game?"

"Non-zero-sum game.", Louise says. But in the time when her daughter is 14. In the moment when she's asking for her help for THAT word. Her daughter turns..

"Yes, that's it!", her daughter notes down the word, she's super happy.

Now, what did just happen?!?

Was it a time travel? We knew the snippets didn't make any sense at all. Were they flashbacks of the past? (Obviously unlikely)

Are they visions of the future? Possibly.

But the non-zero-sum game occurrence makes no sense. How is it possible that she was able to utter the word in the future the exact moment she heard it in the present? Well in the book at least it's the exact same moment.

Something is definitely up here. One thing is clear that at present time she's experiencing her future moments too. WHY that's the case (if it isn't obvious already), I'll explain in the end.

We'll get to know this soon.

So Louise starts to understand some things. 

For our physical attributes, cause and effect follow a chronological rule. Cause follows with effects.

But for heptapods - one needed knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated. They view every action meaningfully over a time. They have a different perception of time.

And Louise starts to understand this too.

As she's experiencing time exactly like them.

Her daughter is 3:

She refuses to go to bed early.

Book Of Ages:

Louise thinks about the concept of Book of Ages. The book which has written the past, present and the future of every single person.

What if a person were to read the book, turn the page to their present day and find out what happens in their future?

Would they do things exactly how it's written, or would they try to contradict it?

Free will exists so contradicting is definitely an option, but what if you don't want to?

Louise has spoken an entire paragraph on it 

The existence of free will meant that we couldn't know the future. And we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Volition was an intrinsic part of consciousness. Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?

Following this, there's an incident. Gary invites Louise on a dinner date. Gary is planning to cook, so they stop by for some shopping to buy ingredients.

And in here while strolling around, Louise spots a bowl. In the same moment she sees the vision of her daughter injuring herself with the exact same bowl in the future when it falls on her head. Her daughter gets some stitches too.

"I reached out and took the bowl from the shelf. The motion didn't feel like something I was forced to do. Instead it seemed just as urgent as my rushing to catch the bowl when it falls on you: an instinct that I felt right in following."

She doesn't know why, but she was inclined to go and get the bowl. The very same bowl which will injure her daughter in the future. She has free will, ofc. She can perfectly turn away and avoid buying the bowl, but she doesn't do so. It just happens out of instinct, as if she was meant to do this.

[If you ask me, this did not make any sense to me. I'll rant on this later]

Next, Louise dreams of her daughter. Of her death.

Remember me mentioning in the beginning of this review regarding how Louise is AWARE of her daughter's death? Before she even conceives? Yeah, that. 

In this it's sort of revealed HOW she dies.

She dies from rock climbing.

Right now in her dream, her daughter is 3, and she's trying to come out of a backpack Louise is carrying while SHE is rock climbing. And while the daughter comes out, she slips and falls.

And Louise wakes up in Morgue. Looking at the face of her dead 25 year old daughter.

She wakes up again and finds herself beside Gary, in real time.

So THIS was the part which reveals about her daughter's death.

And also the part which technically reveals that Gary is in fact the father. As all this time he was simply referred as "The Father"

But, now we all know.

Her daughter is 3:

She's climbing stairs and is very overprotective of her daughter, now that she knows exactly how her daughter is going to die.

"I can almost believe that, given your contrary nature, my attempts to protect you will be what create your love of climbing: first the jungle gym at the playground, then trees out in the green belt around our neighborhood, the rock walls at the climbing club, and ultimately cliff faces in national parks."

I legit have no words to say here.. absolutely none.

Let me just move on.

Louise is back at the camp. She finishes writing a complex Heptapod sentence. And she's pretty proud of it.

And she has some theories..

Heptapod's Semasiographic writing was better suited for a species with a simultaneous mode of consciousness.

For them, speech was a bottleneck because it required that one word follow another sequentially. With writing, on the other hand, every mark on a page was visible simultaneously.

Semasiographic writing naturally took advantage of the page's two-dimensionality; instead of doling out morphemes one at a time, it offered an entire page full of them all at once.

So, in case it wasn't obvious earlier, Louise now understands what is up with all the visions she's been having.

Heptapod's language has introduced her to a simultaneous mode of consciousness, where she perceives times very differently than how normal humans do.

There's even a technical term for this as well

Sapir—Whorf Hypothesis

The structure of a language determines the speaker's perception and categorization of experience.

Ever noticed how your personality sort of changes when you switch from one language to another?

That's Sapir—Whorf Hypothesis.

Also known as Linguistic Relativity. :)

In the entire book AND in the movie, this is part which made me go 🤯🤯

This was never about time travel at all, but just a beautiful introduction of a linguistic term which we never paid heed before.

And pulling in aliens and their new language to prove the point as to HOW one's perception of anything can entirely change is just.. wow. Wow. I'm absolutely speechless.

Her daughter is 2:-

She's breastfeeding her daughter. I'll just drop in the last paragraph of this moment.

At that stage of your life, there'll be no past or future for you; until I give you my breast, you'll have no memory of contentment in the past nor expectation of relief in the future. Once you begin nursing, everything will reverse, and all will be right with the world. NOW is the only moment you'll perceive; you'll live in the present tense. In many ways, it's an enviable state.

In many ways, it's an enviable state.

For Louise now, there is no going back.

knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it."

"For the heptapods, all language was performative. Instead of using language to inform, they used language to actualize. Sure, heptapods already knew what would be said in any conversation; but in order for their knowledge to be true, the conversation would have to take place."

😭🔫

An amusing incident happens right after. Her daughter's age isn't mentioned in this one, but she's telling her a bedtime story.

A story which she has already told before. But this time, she tells it all wrong and her daughter protests, because she wants to hear it the right way. 

"Well if you already know how the story goes, why do you need me to read it to you?" 

"Cause I wanna hear it!"

Louise is trying to tell us, despite knowing exactly what the future holds, she still wants to experience it.

We are closer to the conclusion here. Remember how they are all trying to figure out what is it the Heptapods want? For your sake I'll warn you not to have any expectation, it's not interesting at all.

They are assuming they are here for trade, so they discuss what things can be traded. 

Colonel Weber is asking Louise if we can at least request what we would want in return. Louise affirms but there is no guarantee if that's what they'd be gifting us.

Then Weber asks..

"If we give our gift first, will the value of our gift influence the value of theirs?"

"No," I said. "As far as we can tell, the value of the exchanged items is irrelevant." 

"If only my relatives felt that way," murmured Gary wryly.

Oh Gary, I so agree with you there! 😂

Although Louise is now proficient in Heptapod's language, she understands she doesn't fully experience reality the way a Heptapod does.

"Heptapod B affects just my memory: my consciousness crawls along as it did before, a glowing sliver crawling forward in time, the difference being that the ash of memory lies ahead as well as behind: there is no real combustion. But occasionally I have glimpses when Heptapod B truly reigns, and I experience past and future all at once; my consciousness becomes a half-century-long ember burning outside time. I perceive--during those glimpses--that entire epoch as a simultaneity. It's a period encompassing the rest of my life, and the entirety of yours."

Yours = Her daughter's 💔

Here comes the "gift exchange", which is absolutely hilarious if you ask me. The humans on earth were ready to trade some paintings with them in an exchange for something useful, maybe a space ride, or history of Heptapods, something, anything?

But they just.. disappear.

Yes, disappear, without any explanation. The looking glass becomes transparent as ever.

Gary says..

"I think," he said, "we just saw a demonstration of transmutation at a distance."

Her daughter is a day old:

She's leaning over and looking at the fragile body of her daughter.

I'll feel elated at this evidence of a unique mother-child bond, this certitude that you're the one I carried. Even if I had never laid eyes on you before, I'd be able to pick you out from a sea of babies: Not that one. No, not her either. Wait, that one over there. 

Yes, that's her. She's mine.

So.. the Heptapods left.

"We never did learn why the heptapods left, any more than we learned what brought them here, or why they acted the way they did."

Between the movie and the book, they were some major changes, and I must give some credits for the improvisation done in the movie.

In the movie the Heptapods convey to Louise that they have come to give this gift of language to Louise. And they also make her understand the new perception of time she has now is because of the gift she received. And they also give a reason, telling her this gift is because 3000 years from now they might need help from humans to save Heptapod species. We don't know what kind of help they might need.. yet. But yeah.

Louise in the movie saves the world from a war happening by using her "gift", but let me not describe that in detail now and let's just stick to the book :P

One other major difference is her daughter, based on which this book is about. As it is story of HER life.

!Rant alert!

In movie, she dies of cancer. It's a disease and NOT an accident. In the movie her daughter is a child when she dies. 

In the book, her daughter dies from rock climbing accident when she's 25.

Idk, this doesn't make sense to me one bit. All that explanation of free will, contradictions and consciousness, and I still don't understand how HARD can it be for you skip buying that bowl which will hurt your daughter?

How HARD can it be to convince your daughter to NEVER rock climb? In fact, make her hate it?

Maybe even try telling her the truth that she could die from it?

We'll see in case the universe collapses after that revelation, but at least try?

In movie, I was almost glad to know it's cancer. It's a biological thing, you can't help it. Louise knew when she gave birth to her daughter that she has been born with cells which would turn cancerous tomorrow and take away her life. She can't do anything to stop that. She's completely helpless.

But should she then stop herself from conceiving her?

What would YOU, as a reader, want her to do?

Another thing is clear, Louise and Gary split. In the book there is no explanation at all, but thankfully in the movie they have an answer for that as well. Once Gary finds out about the future of his daughter, he's disgusted. Disgusted by Louise's decision to bring pain in this world.

Why would you want to go ahead and give birth to your child knowing your child would die at a very young age, why?! Gary is not able to look at his own daughter the same way again. And he certainly doesn't look at Louise the same way again.

He leaves them and the father-daughter relationship is scarred forever. 

Louise questions herself, what would you do if your entire life is laid out in front of you, would you still want to experience it, knowing there is immense pain at the end of the tunnel?

Remember one moment when her daughter wished knowing the story the right way, even though she knows exactly what happens in the story, that's all because she simply wants to hear it anyway?

Isn't Louise feeling the same? She knows what would unfold in the lives of her, Gary and their daughter's, but should she gamble away all the good memories she had with them just to avoid the inevitable pain in the future?

She has experienced some of the moments already with the visions.

The day her daughter was born.

When she learnt how to walk.

When she learnt how to speak.

Their memories of trips they had.

Helping with her homework.

Her college. Her graduation. Her career.

Could she give it up? All of it?

The story began with an important question which Gary asks Louise, where it all began. And the story ends with the same moment in time as Louise ends her narration

Working with the heptapods changed my life. I met your father and learned Heptapod B, both of which make it possible for me to know you now, here on the patio in the moonlight. Eventually, many years from now, I'll be without your father, and without you. All I will have left from this moment is the heptapod language. So I pay close attention, and note every detail. 

From the beginning I knew my destination, and I chose my route accordingly. But am I working toward an extreme of joy, or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum, or a maximum? 

These questions are in my mind when your father asks me, "Do you want to make a baby?" And I smile and answer, "Yes," and I unwrap his arms from around me, and we hold hands as we walk inside to make love, to make you.

The End.

____________

Story of Your Life. Story of her daughter's life.

As mentioned earlier, this book wasn't about aliens or time travelling, but introduced us with a beautiful Linguistic concept of Sapir—Whorf Hypothesis. Which makes one realise how learning a new language changes one's perception on things.

It changes your personality. You're a new YOU with the language.

While we learnt all that, we came to know about her daughter's life, who hasn't even been born yet, but we still know her, all credits to the consciousness which Louise now has. The "gift" given to her by the Heptapods.

So with this book, we learnt quite a lot of concepts, both from Physics and linguistic point of view and this book was also filled with a bucketful of emotions.

Although there are parts I deeply disagree with, and finding it hard to understand, but that doesn't make this book any less likable. You argue with your favourite books too, don't you?

So such stories get added to my list of books I'd love to reread over and over again sometime in the future.

A bright 5 star from my side. ❤️

Quotes from the book:

What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?

Words: 6174

Chars: 34367