The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman - Denis Thériault

I'm going to really struggle to portray the beauty of this book, the many layers of storyline, the amount of times it surprised me, what it taught me and how it left me. But. I will try.

Firstly, I think this book is seriously mis-named. Unless you look at the very first layer of storyline. If you read it and focus only on the superficial, then yes, this is a story about a lonely postman, job done.

But this is not about a lonely postman. It is about yearning for life. It is about obsession. It is about betrayal. It's about learning. It is about the better you and the better me. It is about love. It's about connecting with someone on the deepest level, to where circumstances happen that could only occur because it was pre-destined. Meant-to-be. Fate.

It is about inevitability.

I'm not a big poetry fan, (although everyone should know E.E. Cummings' poem 'I carry your heart with me'), so at times I struggled a bit with the Japanese poetry. If you struggle with poetry, persevere. This is a book not to give up on. It has a purpose, trust the author he's a true storyteller.

The most beautiful part of the book is in the reader learning about and falling into the world of an 'enso'. And I can't explain this without ruining the book for you.

I'm torn with actually reviewing this book and telling the story, which will then rob you of the experience of the surprises and could never do the book the justice it deserves. Or just saying READ THIS BOOK. It is only 100 pages. I don't know how he fitted it all in. 

I'm going to do something in between. I'm going to just shower you with words that the book made me feel, think, learn, in the hope that I convey a scent of the book without exposing it's secrets.

Curious. Intimate. Stalker. Friendship. Trust. Passion. Immersed. Jealousy. Betrayal. Secrets. Uncomfortable. Raunchy. Tender. Oblivious. Intrigued. Poetic. 

Enough already. Just read it! Ok?

One Day - David Nicholls

Emma Morley is smart, kind, geeky looking, funny and is one of those girls that you know will work hard until success comes to her.

Dexter Mayhew would be smart (if he put his mind to it), can be kind (but can also be cuttingly unthoughtful), is anti-geek (think lad, think extrovert, think centre-stage, think big-head), is popular (in-crowd, TV presenter, drink, drugs, girls, rocknroll) and is one of those guys that success clings to without deserving or earning it.

They are pretty much opposites. 

They are also in love with each other. 

It would just be great if someone would tell Dexter this.

Em and Dex, best friends, practice an annual tiptoe dance around their feelings each year on St Swithens Day. Dexter inevitably has a new beautiful girlfriend in tow, a new gig in town, and increasingly less time and consideration for Emma. Emma, after academic success, is struggling to find her feet in the real world, still single, still geeky and getting a little bit fat.

Fast forward four years. St Swithens Day...

Em and Dex, best friends... Emma is a successful teacher. Emma is dating, unsuccessfully. Dexter is perpetually drunk, a washed up TV has-been, only he hasn't realised this yet. He loses Emma's good opinion and she breaks away from him. They are both heartbroken.

Fast forward four years. St Swithens Day...

Em and Dex, relative strangers, meeting only at weddings of mutual friends, awkwardly. Emma's no longer geeky, is coming into her own. Dexter is sober, has a fiancé, and a baby (pending). They miss each other. They gravitate back towards each other.

Fast forward four years. St Swithens Day...

Em and Dex, best friends... Emma's living in Paris, an author. She's dating. A ruined (wife left him for his friend) but hopeful (he's coming to claim her) Dexter arrives in Paris. Emma has always been the chaser, now she's the chasee. But there's no denying it, she's only ever loved Dexter.

Fast forward four years. St Swithens Day...

Em and Dex, TOGETHER! Emma's married. Dexter's married. Emma's married to Dexter. Life is finally as it should be. Their futures are one. Big plans.

Then Emma dies.

Yup. Hit off her bike by a lorry. FML

Dexter chases her shadow around every place they've ever been, needing to feel her. He's lost. But this time Emma isn't there to help him find himself again. A world without Em is unknown to Dex. The only sense he can make of the world, is his daughter, Jasmine.

Dex and Jasmine... Dexter's world (with an Emma-Morley-shaped-hole) goes on.

Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

If you knew how the choices you make would shape your future, would you change it if you could? How could you be sure your alternative future would be better, more fulfilling, less painful than your current future? You couldn't.

Ursula is born. It's snowing outside, the doctor cannot reach her through the snow, he is not there to untangle her cord from around her neck, and Ursula dies.

Reset.

Ursula is born. It snowing outside, the doctor makes it through the snow and he arrives just in time. Ursula lives. Life moves on, younger siblings arrive, seasons change. Still Ursula's future is fragile. A family outing to the beach ends in tragedy after Ursula is caught in the current, Ursula dies.

Reset.

Snow, doctor, Ursula Lives. Beach, stranger saves girl caught in the current, Ursula lives. 

Ursula's many futures play out before our eyes, revealing life's delicacy. Somehow, eventually, one life leads to adulthood. However, Ursula's adulthood coincides with living in London during the Second World War. You want her to be able to save progress, like a computer game, so when another life is lost she doesn't have to start over. But she can't.

Reset, Reset, Reset.

Ursula becomes aware of the shadow of her previous lives, a haunting déjà vu which encroaches upon her, bringing with it a silent terror. She becomes able to dodge previous deaths, to push the boundaries of each life. Her adult lives diverge from their normal paths faster than her young lives. 

She lives several adult lives in London during the blitz. Then one in Germany, where she becomes known to an Eva Braun and her boyfriend, Adolf Hitler. 

After further London lives, and the loss of friends and families from the continued bombardment of England, a plan seeds in Ursula's mind, she is going to control her next life, and take it to Germany.

She chooses a life to choose another's death to choose to save hundreds of lives.

Ursula lives, Hilter dies, London lives.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

[big big spoiler alert]

Start in the middle. When a story is too hard to tell, when the beginning taunts you and the end haunts you, the middle is an easier place, a safer place, to start.

So, that's where we meet Rosemary. In the middle of her story. She's telling us about the disappearance of her sister, Fern. About her mothers turmoil, her father's decline. It's right about the middle where her brother, Lowell, leaves home. 

She's re-telling the story of her 5 year old self. Not understanding much, being told even less. Yearning for her sister's return. Her memories too young to demand clarity. Any she does have she questions. Are they real? Are they her own? Or those that form and crystallise on the retelling by someone else?

It's only later, once Rosemary is comfortable with the reader, trusts us, does she tell us what she keeps secret from those that know her adult self. 

Fern is alive. 

Fern was taken. 

Fern is a chimpanzee.

(Ok. I'll admit at this point I very almost put the book down)

We are forced to confront our feelings about this new knowledge. I felt cheated for a few pages. My empathy was already invested. She said Fern was her sister. She never told me Fern was a chimp. 

Question is, does this change anything?

(I tiptoed further into the story but this time more carefully. I didn't want to be tricked again)

Open mind. Read on.

So, Fern and Rosemary were raised together as babies since Fern arrived at 3 months old. Their father, a psychologist, works at the local university. Their house is full of grad students. 

Observing. Recording. Analysing. Theorising. Concluding.

It's a study of Human vs Chimp. Who learns faster, grows tallest, communicates best. The study is meant to be of Fern. But the experiment involves both sisters. 

Fern and Rosemary are inseparable. Learning, playing, sleeping, eating. Their worlds are one. 

So when Fern disappears from the family home, Rosemary is inconsolable. She doesn't know how to live in a world without her sister, her twin. Human children avoid her, scared of her unnerving chimp-learnt expressions and noises which co-exist amongst her human words and features. She's an amalgam. Chimp-girl.

After the middle, we swing ape like back and forth between the beginning and the end as we learn the answers Rosemary seeks as she picks at old memories and uncovers new truths...

Where is Fern?

Where is Lowell?

What happened that day?

And where did all this guilt come from?

I Am Pilgrim -Terry Hayes

A teenage boy races on his bike weaving between hordes of spectators who have gathered to watch a local man beheaded. The man is innocent. His crime? To speak out loud against the Saudi royal family. The man is the boy's father. 

The boy doesn't get there in time, arriving instead as the crowds disperse, leaving an empty dust blown space and a world which no longer holds his father's soul. 

In this moment the boy's innocence is lost, and as he swears revenge for his father's death, Saracen is born.

In the years since his father's death Saracen has trained as a muj fighter and as a doctor. Technically great, incomprehensibly strong and unwavingly determined he decides his revenge will be to cripple America, as a strong allie of Saudi. 

His weapon will be catastrophic. He painstakingly pieces together the genetic coding for a virus previously eradicated from Earth. 

Smallpox.

To this deadly disease he cuts in additional coding to ensure his virus evades the West's stockpile of Smallpox vaccines. 

In a remote forest atop a remote mountain in Afghanistan he runs his human trials on three kidnappees. The virus is hot and lethal. 

Dwarfing the danger of Smallpox he renames his creation Blackpox. 

The graves of the human trials are found by passing American helicopters, drawn by the heat picked up on their thermal imaging coming from the smouldering remains of the test hut. Saracen narrowly escapes.

The gravity of the situation dawns as they discover the nature of the virus.

The race is on.

Born on the other side of the world is an intelligence agent, an unknown, unheralded, legend. Tired of his lonely existence he yearns to return to a normal

life. But it's not to be. He alone is sent to stop Saracen.

His codename is Pilgrim.

Their worlds spin towards each other as Pilgrim hunts Saracen, whilst Saracen reproduces the virus on a grand scale ready for deployment in the hospitals of America.

With no name to chase, no nationality to track, finding Saracen in time seems impossible. 

However... What is the alternative?

Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind

Wizards. Good. Evil. Barriers between magical worlds. Impending doom. Truths. Lies. Friendships. Disloyalties. Bravery. Foolishness. Endurance. Responsibility. Love. Love. Love. Courage. Belief. Destiny.