Consolation

It's been a while since I read a book, it really has. I've been spending most of my time reading scripts and watching films, so when a friend of mine gave me this book and assured me it was "my type" of book I was simply annoyed. But she was right, it is completely and absolutely my type of book and it is exactly what I needed to read this weekend.

I shall link to this article here, which I think does a very good job of describing the many joys hiding between the covers of this book. The joys and treasures are indeed hiding, because the beginning of the story is dark, slow and mysterious. The way to read the first few chapters is to be completely open to the not-knowing, what I mean by this is that you have to almost pretend that you understand the intricacies of characters and plot, go with the flow, and have faith that all will become clear. It all eventually becomes miraculously clear, and then you suddenly feel this tremendous surge of love for life which could only have been created through those final revelations.

It's a story about parenting and mothering which actually, really and truly, I swear, captures that painful struggle and those moments of joy. It's a story which I wish I had read a decade ago because I could have used some of its consolation; then again, reading it now is pretty much damn perfect. So many wonderful scenes at the end of this novel, oh boy, so many smiles I smiled. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a scene with a selection of cookie-cutters that simply kills me, and a story told by a little girl after an architect builds her a play-house, and...all right...I'm not going to say anything else. I'll leave it for you to discover.