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5 “pristine, refreshing, clear�� stars !!

2016 Bronze Award - Third Favorite Read (Tie)

I am a man that resides in the world of emotion. They are here with me always and are always acute, not in the background. Emotions often make me soar to the heavens or shiver in delight, but other times they make me flounder, weigh me down like the experience of walking in the cold snow with a hole in my boot that leaves my precious foot frigid and lonely.

I am unsure why the last paragraph came to my consciousness as I write a review of this sparkling , intelligent and mesmerizing book. This is an unusual novel that very successfully describes the process of thinking that in many ways is antithetical to my own psychological processes.

This is a book about thought in its clearest and purest form. Emotion is not experienced, really, but rather described in a way that quenched my thirst and helped me navigate my inner wilderness.

I had to read this book in such small sections as I wanted to savor each and every sentence that was so carefully crafted and became a miniature portrait of beauty in its simplest forms. Ms. Cusk is a photographer of thought and insight and she captures stills that really are too quick for the human eye or the rather the mind’s eye to see. For the person that is thought based this would lead to interest and enlightenment but for somebody that is emotion based it leads (for me) to the heights of passion, a sense of wonder and at other times brief despair. Ms. Cusk’s prose, however, rescues me and makes me shake in wonder with respect that her creative mind can distill with such clarity and wisdom many truths about relationships, personal histories and the everyday minutiae of life. Minutiae and details that really should not be overlooked but relished, for there are so many , and in each one there is a profoundness that can lead a thoughtful person to create a work of philosophy and an emotional one to either spiritual fervor or the elicitation of rarer emotions such as ecstasy and wonder.

As I write this, I almost feel that I am channeling part of Ms. Cusk in an alternate form as the words are whirring out faster and faster onto this page. Her work makes me feel lighter, more beautiful and that my own personal story is important not just to myself but also perhaps to you, the reader. I cannot expect to be understood but through small conversations I can connect to you and clarify and see the world in its lightness, its darkness and its momentary illusions.

I know by reading this review that you do not know what this book is about but I hope that these sentences convey my immense respect, my desire for more insights and my thankfulness that this novel has been created. This is not only on my more familiar emotional level but also through my written thoughts and reflections.

This book is not about conversations as many reviewers have stated but a series of soliloquies that interact, merge, expand and sometimes die.

Thank you Ms. Cusk. I want so much more of your prose that I am aching with longing. I am thirsty for thought already and again.