Aislinn Hunter

Lots of good reviews here, so won't repeat. Actually, I don't know what to say about this novel except maybe don't read it before bed. There are far too many characters in present and past and distant past to keep track of in a sleepy brain.
It's a lyrical book, with wonderful vignettes of characters stepping into sunlight (a recurring theme, almost too often), hinting at phrases of truncated poetry, sensations and such.
The plot? Confusing, and I so wanted more resolution as the mystery solved was unimportant and didn't seem worth the lead up.
Not sure I'd read this author again, a bit too much, but the sensation of the book stays with you, probably because you feel frustrated at the end. I read the acknowledgements in the hope that some further detail was forthcoming. It wasn't.
Lots of words, in the end about not much.… (més)

Jane was fifteen-year-old when Lily, the child she was babysitting, disappeared when they were out in the woods with the girl's father. Twenty years later is she working in a small London museum that is about to close, because of lack of funding. Jane has been researching a young girl that disappeared over one hundred years before in the same woods that Lily disappeared. Will finding out what happened to N. make Jane move on with her life?

One of the main reason for me to choose this book for my next blogging for books read was that it was compared to Possession by A.S Byatt. Sure I never thought that it would be as good, but for a moment in the first half of the book, I actually thought that I would find a book nearly as interesting. But alas, the story just wasn't that interesting. Sure the book was beautifully written, but I felt that the story dragged on and that it lacked a really good ending. I wished for more answers and frankly the mystery with the missing N. that disappeared over one hundred years ago wasn't that interesting.

Also, the spirit that narrated the story was an interesting approach, but frankly they were mostly annoying towards the end. I had rather read the book without them.

I received the book from Hogarth and from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.… (més)

between 4 and 4.5 stars. this is gorgeous and lyrical and stunning. it is full of lush language but the story is of grief and longing, of loss and of intense desire of connection.

it is told in two parallel stories that take place about 45 years apart. the professor's narrative, told in first person, as he and his two friends have tried to escape the nazis, are refugees trying to enter spain. he has a brief encounter with 5 year old pia, who, at around 50 years old, is the second story, told in third person. she is living on an island and becomes part of a party trying to help a ship that has become shipwrecked in a storm.

this is so beautiful it is like a long and lovely poem. (perhaps there is some overt link to ovid that i don't know. it would make sense though.) as such, i know i missed some things, probably the deep ovid/narciccus connections and some of the philosophy, especially the talk of mirrors and echoes. but even so, and from the very beginning, it is just so gorgeous and tender and full of emotion and these characters.

it's probably a lack of attention or understanding, but i felt the professor's sections were stronger than pia's. i suspect on a reread that i may better see what she was doing there. i will definitely read this again, and i will be seeking her out in the future. i'm so impressed by this.… (més)

Breathtaking in its brief and sincere evocation of two lives dramatically altered by the wars of early 20th century Europe. Particularly notable in this short novel is the attention to voice and perspective; the characters, a German literary critic and a peripatetic sous-chef, are utterly true to what such characters might truly have known and experienced, with the critic occasionally preoccupied by concepts of imagery and Jungian types, the chef haunted and kept in a state of seemingly deliberate but psychologically compelled motion caused by the loss of her powerful journalist mother. Striking lines and observations grace nearly every page, some bitter and some illuminating, and despite the tragedies that surround both characters in their only tangentially brushing lives, hope arises with their senses of purpose and persists in the continuity of an image that drives him through her discovery of a way to help that reflects the image back upon itself. Will seek out anything else by this author, with gusto.… (més)