The Silver Linings Playbook

In The Silver Linings Playbook, Mr. Quick has done something very difficult for literature to do: inspire hope. As the unflinchingly and endearingly honest main character notes, many of the greatest classics in American literature end in despair, or are such thorough condemnations of life as it is that it is difficult sometimes to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The lives of the authors often mirror the grim reality of their novels. Hemingway shoots himself dead with a shotgun and Plath sticks her head into an oven. Pat Peoples' explanation? They never looked up at the clouds at sunset.

It is this simple kind of appreciation for beauty which distinguishes Pat not just from his literary contemporaries, but from all of the other characters in The Silver Linings Playbook itself. He appreciates characters like Hester Prynne and Holden Caulfield who, like himself, hold onto their values and nobility in a harsh world that seems bent on stripping them of everything they hold dear. Though Pat himself is slightly deluded - he is not just on ‘apart time' with his wife, there is no ‘inevitable reunion' as the first chapter title suggests - his honest, everyman's struggle, epitomized by the apt adage of ‘practicing being kind rather than right', against all the forces in the world conspiring to break his hope is so convincing that the reader starts to believe in silver linings himself.

I have always said stop and smell the roses now I may have to look for a little silver in my life.