OK, some of the contents of this book are a little far-fetched. I think that the author knew it, and early on in the book a couple call off their wedding several times within a few weeks – sending out invitations, cancellations, invitations again. Already we are in the territory of hard to believe. But finally I was happy to forgive some of this and just relax and enjoy the story – there was a lot I liked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am a sucker for themes involving someone moving away and starting a new life (because I did) and if the destination is a lonely Italian island off the coast of Napoli then even better. There is also a good stretch of the book where the main character finds himself being transferred to an office in the back of a lonely floor of a huge office building, left to his own devices. Later we find out why, but the dawning realization that he is on his own for the time being really hit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have read another novel from this author, and while I enjoyed that one, it was a little futuristic and not as easy for me to identify with. The author\u2019s writing is great here, reminding me a lot of Anthony Doerr, with that sort of dreamlike stream of poetic moments. It isn\u2019t so esoteric that I got tired out, just really well written prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of my favorite moments was a sort of heist of a one-eyed cat, delivered from a New York apartment to an island off Italy. I liked it better than Ocean\u2019s Eleven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The novel takes a turn for the spooky, especially near the end, and I really liked this sudden injection of the occult. It made a possible paradise turn into a possible prison. Well done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next I am reading The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OK, some of the contents of this book are a little far-fetched. I think that the author knew it, and early on in the book a couple call off their wedding several times within a few weeks – sending out invitations, cancellations, invitations again. Already we are in the territory of hard to believe. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-11S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}