Candy

My group for the final project decided to read the book entitled Candy and I would have to say it is the best book I have ever read. The book reminded me of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This is because the main characters are similar. Like Oscar, Joe who is the main character of Candy meets this girl named Candy who he falls madly in love with only to find out she is a prositute and is addicted to drugs which she gets from her pimp. Joe quickly finds out that Candy's pimp is a very large intimidating man who likes to beat his women when they don't do what he wants them to do. This reminds me of Oscar because he too falls in love with women who get beaten by the men the are involved with. Both Oscar and Joe are naive with women as well, it took Joe awhile before he realized that Candy was a prostitute and that she was addicted to drugs, even though there were signs that gave away Candy's drug use and prostitution he still didn't really realize that this was going on.

The ending of this book was excellent, the author left the ending somewhat open, he gave you just enough information to conclude the novel, but he didn't completely tell you everything that happened to the characters maybe to allow the reader to use their imagination to decide for themselves what should happen to Candy and Joe. He really focused on addictions quite a lot in this book, which I found very interesting since addiction is in everyday life and a lot of times you dont' actually notice it. For instance, Joe the main character is in a band and is addicted to music and playing his guitar where Candy is addicted to drugs which has cause her to become addicted to prositution in order to feed her drug habit. It was obvious to me with Candy's addictions but I didn't think of Joe's interest in music as a addiction until I read the interview with the author at the back of the book. Overall I thought this was an excellent book and would strongly recommend it.