A Bookish Month
First Published February 29, 2016
We’re encouraged to read during February and, despite one extra day tacked on to the month this year, I found time to read only two books.
I got on board with The Girl on the Train (pun intended) by Paula Hawkins by immersing myself in this thriller during a weekend snow storm, a perfect time to read a novel for hours on end. I was immediately drawn into the story when Rachel, on her daily commute into London by train, glances into the backyards she passes each day and sees something in one that deeply disturbs her, something she shouldn’t have seen and wishes she hadn’t seen. From there on her life goes out of control and the reliability of her report to the police is questioned, since she is an alcoholic. This thriller with its slap-in-the-face twist at the end shows how appearances can be deceiving and how, in one fleeting moment, what is considered normal can change.
The use of flash forward and flash back writing methods by Anthony Doerr in All the Light We Cannot See immediately drew me into his remarkable novel. This historical fiction of sorts is set in France and Germany, and involves a young girl, Marie-Laure, who is blind since the age of six and lives with her father, a master locksmith of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. An invaluable gem of one hundred and thirty-three carets known as the Sea of Flames is supposedly locked within the Museum.
In nearby Germany, the young orphan, Werner, grows up exploring sound through his interest in radios. This is in contrast to Marie-Laure’s use of her sharp senses to read Braille and move about her neighbourhood by counting steps and drainage holes, and recognizing familiar smells.
Enter WW II with the plunder of national treasures among its atrocities and the need for Marie Laure and Werner to exercise their incredible skills. Is the Sea of Flames in the Museum the real stone or has it been sequestered somewhere so obvious as to be overlooked?
Pulitzer Prize winner Doerr is a gem of a storyteller; his book had me enthralled to the very end.
What were your favourite February reads?
