How do I even begin to tell you about this book? At the end I just wished these characters which felt so real would be there forever telling me their story. It's all about the characters and what they go through. You get inside their head, there's something that they need to tell, and you're there hearing them talk to themselves. It's unnerving because it's so real and so heartbreaking at times. They're not trying to get your sympathy though, far from it as a matter of fact. The mother who lost her child in Vietnam and how she's still trying to deal with her loss, the unusual priest who has his own notions and he's doing what he can to make the world he lives in a better place, a prostitute who has all those dreams for her daughter that never materialized, and so much more and in the midst of it all, the brave tightrobe walker who walks in the air between the Twin Towers linking all characters together someway somehow.
There were so many touching moments, I felt their oppression sometimes. Claire was so vivid for me, when she talked about her son, how the emptiness eats her from the inside. I felt like crying over her sadness, consoling her, telling her I understand since nobody truly did. She was living, but it was as if she was shut off from the world.
What I loved the most was the style of writing, there in an unexpected paragraph you'd find a line that takes you off your guard. McCann's writing is so precise, at times he sticks to the point, gives you very little details, only facts, lets you imagine the rest. And at times, he'd describe things in such details you can see them, no in fact you're there with them in that place listening to their conversation. Simply brilliant. He knew how to make you fall in love with the novel slowly but with passion.
I've enjoyed it not only because it's so great, but because it's something completely original and different. Something I wouldn't usually read.
Oh and Ruqaiya, you're absolutely amazing.
There were so many touching moments, I felt their oppression sometimes. Claire was so vivid for me, when she talked about her son, how the emptiness eats her from the inside. I felt like crying over her sadness, consoling her, telling her I understand since nobody truly did. She was living, but it was as if she was shut off from the world.
What I loved the most was the style of writing, there in an unexpected paragraph you'd find a line that takes you off your guard. McCann's writing is so precise, at times he sticks to the point, gives you very little details, only facts, lets you imagine the rest. And at times, he'd describe things in such details you can see them, no in fact you're there with them in that place listening to their conversation. Simply brilliant. He knew how to make you fall in love with the novel slowly but with passion.
I've enjoyed it not only because it's so great, but because it's something completely original and different. Something I wouldn't usually read.
Oh and Ruqaiya, you're absolutely amazing.
"In the summer quiet. Just be. Joshua liked the Beatles, used to listen to them in his room, you could hear the noise even through the big headphones he loved. Let it be. Silly song, really. You let it be, it returns. There's the truth. You let it be, it drags you to the ground. You let it be, it crawls up your walls."
Page 81
"Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward."
Page 81
"There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface.
There is, I think, a fear of love.
There is a fear of love."
Page 156
"People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time- but even on the best day nobody's perfect."
Page 301
"She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear."
Page 339
