Firstly, can we take a time to appreciate this wonderful cover?! I really enjoy it, and that's what first attracted me to it in the epic Waterstones Piccadilly. I was really intrigued by the synopsis on the back of this:
"Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . "
I love the idea that books are more than just objects of pleasure, but that they can have bigger importances and bring people together and facilitate relationships.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I am always intrigued by books with less than 300 pages, because I wonder how they can pack a huge plotline into such a small amount of words. If it is done well, it can be fabulous. However here, not only was a big story being packed in, but it was being told by 3 different narrators. For me, there wasn't enough time to bond with even one of the characters, because they were spread too thinly. The whole story seemed quite disjointed. You know when you wrote essays at school, and had to cut loads out to stick to a word-count, and you end up with the bare bones of the original, without all the linky bits which make it flow well? That's what it felt like with this book!
There were a lot of little threads of the story, and I was intrigued to see how they would all tie together at the end, but again I thought it was quite poorly done! Maybe I am being overly harsh, as a lot of people praise the 'exquisite' ending, but it just didn't do it for me, I'm afraid.
If you have read this, or any other stories by Krauss, please comment below and let me know your opinion :)
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