"We invented light to deny obscurity. We put stars in the sky, we put lampposts everywhere in the streets. And lamps inside our houses. Turn off the stars and look at the sky. What do you see? Nothing. You're facing the infinity your limited mind can't comprehend and you can't see anything anymore. And it scares you. Facing infinity is scary. Don't fret - your eyes will always stop at the stars that block their vision and they won't ever go further. You can ignore the emptiness they're hiding. Turn off the lights and open your eyes wide. You can't see anything. Only the darkness that you're perceiving rather than seeing. Darkness isn't outside of you, darkness is inside."

Back when I was seventeen, this novel about the decadent Paris youth was all the rage. 2007 and 2008 were the years of indie rock, of the glorification of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, the years when the bands who made it where kids from wealthy Parisian neighbourhoods with sad and depressed intellectual references, the years when it became commonplace for teenagers to drink themselves into oblivion and smoke a pack a day. The richer and more depressed you were, the better, the classier. Boys wore leather jackets and skinny jeans, white shirts and had their hair curly and unkempt. Girls had long hair, full fringes, ballet pumps and Longchamp Pliage handbags to go to school.

I was never going to be a part of this world.

First, as I have said before, I was afraid of being drunk. Also, I wasn't rich enough for the designer clothes and handbags, I looked like a toddler even with the regulatory full fringe and long hair look and I couldn't have made anyone believe I was a day older than fourteen. I just liked the music and the references (2007/2008 is known as my "indie phase"), I craved a love story like Lola's in the French version of Lol and I thought I could relate to Serena from Gossip Girl when unrequited love snuck its way into my life.

Hell was released when I was sixteen or seventeen and the closest things we had to Hell, Victoria, Sybille and co adored it, they quoted it on their teenage blogs, they were more likely to experience any of it than I ever will and I had never opened this book until two days ago. I am aware most people think it's trash. I'm not too sure where I stand myself when it comes to its literary qualities and flaws. But teenage me found it in a bookstore last July and felt the desperate need to read it, eight years later. Long overdue, eh?

It had what I expected it to have - depressing intellectual references (Baudelaire is as casually thrown in there as Taylor Swift is in my life), cocaine, expensive vodka oranges, designer brands, sex and depressed people by the ton. It is the clear depiction of a world I used to look at from afar and it is exactly what I remembered it to be. No one has a middle class first name and people buy Burberry like I buy Primark. 

In their reviews, lots of people have said they cannot have empathy for "sad rich kids". This novel is ninety five percent about the wounds and woes of Ella (a.k.a Hell), eighteen, depressed and high on cocaine seven days a week. I do have empathy for sad rich kids because money doesn't buy you happiness, and, in these people's cases, money opens bigger doors for depression and suicidal behaviours because they can afford them. I don't care how rich they are. It's not about the money. It's about how fucked up you are. I don't care if you think you're better than me because you live in central Paris and I'd have to sell my first born to think about it. I care that you are depressed and sad and fucked up, you think cocaine's helping when it's not and even though it would ruin the point of this novel, I want fate to shine down on you because that's the kind of person I am.

But this novel is not about empathy.

This novel is how "money doesn't buy happiness" hits you in the face with a brick. It's not about the money, we have all felt this way. Who, when going through hard times and possibly depression, hasn't thought it would be better to be "indifferent and dignified rather than miserable and pathetic"? I know I have. I don't know. Teenage me feels like a certain part of my life could relate to this book even though I've never had the lifestyle and I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. 

I see why some people would think Hell is trash and I get it. The characters are bland and they all merge together, and I think that's the whole point - they also all merge together for Hell as a person, because she doesn't care and she's so depressed she can't discern who is who anymore. The writing is not really that good, there are lots of sentences that don't really make sense, and sometimes I wondered why on Earth did Lolita Pille get a book contract. And then I got it - stream of consciousness, it's the unfiltered, uncensored thoughts of a depressed person and obviously, they don't make sense, and if the voice inside her head screams, it makes sense that the words on the paper scream too. I think it's not as bad as some people make it out to be.

I have yet to watch the film, because up until two days ago I had completely forgotten a film existed. I haven't watched a film in ages. I think my teenage years need to see this one.

"Happiness is an optical illusion, two mirrors reflecting the same image forever. Don't try to get to the original image, it doesn't exist."