Surat Panjang tentang Jarak Kita yang Jutaan Tahun Cahaya

Author: Dewi Kharisma Michellia

Publisher: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama

Publication Date: June 2013

Pages: 240

Waktu terus bergerak, tetapi ujung usia kebanyakan manusia tak pernah melebihi dua ratus tahun--tak sampai menyentuh hitungan satu tahun cahaya. Tak peduli alat tercanggih dari negeri manapun yang kita gunakan untuk menempuh jarak itu, kau dan aku--dalam jarak sejauh itu--sudah barang tentu tak akan mungkin lagi bertemu secara fisik. Maka bila surat-suratku ini kelak diberikan judul, aku mungkin akan dengan jail menamainya "Surat Panjang tentang Jarak Kita yang Jutaan Tahun Cahaya".

I think unrequited love is one of the saddest  things in the world. Keep all your feeling inside with no likelihood of it being returned by the recipient, what could be more sorrowful than that? In this great book, the author, Dewi Kharisma Michellia delivered her story about a 40-year-old woman who lives all alone in her apartment and keeps dreaming about her one-sided love.  

The book is unique, it has a quite long title, the story's told using 37 letters written drown by a 40-year-old woman to Mr. Alien, her forever love, and there are  no name mentioned even for the lead characters. The letter is started at the time the 40-year-old woman receives a wedding invitation from Mr. Alien, his childhood friend. She is so shocked and thinks that her world turns upside down. But being a solitaire, she has no one to talk to therefore she finally decides to deliver her feeling through her regular letters. By reading the letter, we will find out about the woman's life, her unhappy childhood, her emptiness, her cynics through life, and the like.

I salute the writer's deep research and how she maintained to write the letter little by little until we finally enter the life of the lead character, trapped in there and instead out trying to find a way out, we get too curious to know the ending. How interesting. No wonder if the book is acclaimed as the finalist of novel writing competition hold by Dewan Kesenian Jakarta 2012, she delivers new thing to literature with her writing style, choice of words, diction and many more. I can't get this story out of my mind. It just likes a horror movie that keeps haunting me for several days. I feel so involved with what happens to the lead character there. Only a good author might do such thing. Highly recommended book. Worth to read.