The Widow by Fiona Barton

This book touched me so deeply that I simply cannot talk about it. Anything I say will destroy the feelings I am left with.

I don't even want to fall back on clichés such as magnificent, wonderful, brilliant, unbelievable.

My emotional reaction to this book astounds me.  Gut wrenching, heart breaking.

I urgently need to take a walk ... 

Later then.

BLURB

'Me, the grieving widow? Don't make me laugh.'

A voice as startling and unreliable as The Girl On The Train, a cast as compelling as Broadchurch. 

Jean Taylor is the wife of a man labelled a monster.

Glen Taylor was accused of heinous crimes, implicated in the disappearance of two-year-old Bella Elliot, snatched from her front garden four years ago. But now he’s dead and Jean Taylor is finally ready to tell her story.

For the reporter who has secured the exclusive interview, this is the scoop of a lifetime. For the detective who has lived a half-life since he failed to get justice for the lost little girl, it is a chance to uncover the truth that has eluded him for so long.

It's time. Jean Taylor is going to tell us what she knows.

My career has taken some surprising twists and turns over the years. I have been a journalist - senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at The Mail on Sunday, where I won Reporter of the Year at the National Press Awards, gave up my job to volunteer in Sri Lanka and since 2008, have trained and worked with exiled and threatened journalists all over the world.

But through it all, a story was cooking in my head.

The worm of my first book infected me long ago when, as a national newspaper journalist covering notorious crimes and trials, I found myself wondering what the wives of those accused really knew - or allowed themselves to know.

It took the liberation of my career change to turn that fascination into a tale of a missing child, narrated by the wife of the man suspected of the crime, the detective leading the hunt, the journalist covering the case and the mother of the victim.

Much to my astonishment and delight, The Widow was published in 36 countries and made the Sunday Times and New York Times Best Seller lists.

It gave me the confidence to write a second book ,The Child, in which I return to another story that had intrigued me as a journalist. It begins with the discovery of a newborn's skeleton on a building site. It only makes a paragraph in an evening newspaper but for three women it's impossible to ignore.

The Child will be published in June 2017 and I am embarking on my next novel. My husband and I are still living the good life in south-west France, where I am writing in bed, early in the morning when the only distraction is our cockerel, Titch, crowing.

 SOURCE: fionabartonauthor.com

The Breakdown by B.A. Paris

Cass was on the wrong road during a terrible storm. She saw a woman in a car in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night. She did not stop long enough. She was too scared. It was raining so hard she could not understand why the woman did not ask her for help. Neither of them left their cars. The storm was rolling over them, preventing them to make contact, get out. When she arrived home she could not remember the mundane little things and needed her husband to remind her of appointments, events, invitation, setting the alarm clock. What was wrong with her? Why was it so difficult to pull herself together? And why could she not trust herself?

The answers came unexpectedly and too late.

I knew since the very beginning what was going on, but did not know how the drama would play itself out. Curiosity let me into almost the same predicament as the protagonist. Hers was serious. Cass was riddled with confusion and guilt. So was I, but for very different reasons. While she struggled to escape her situation, I had no intentions whatsoever to leave this psychological thriller and surface before the very end.

What a sad ending it was! I just wanted to cry for them all, while being relieved that it was over. What if she took a different route? What if ...

Water under the bridge, yes. For Cass the solution brought new possibilities and a new future. So it was a good ending. But was it really? After all that she went through Cass deserved a new tomorrow. An innocent, new born day...

This afternoon it was raining outside. Wonderful rain after three years of devastating drought. The four cats and two dogs were on the bed with me, listening to the storm outside. I was under a light blanket, reading as though my life depended on it. It was the perfect book for the perfect day.

I actually smiled when I finished this cozy book. Sadly I cannot tell you why ... :-))
I can tell you this, though, I will absolutely read this author again.

Excellent!

B A Paris grew up in England but has spent most of her adult life in France. She has worked both in finance and as a teacher and has five daughters. Behind Closed Doors is her first novel.

Into The Water by Paula Hawkins

Paula Hawkins, a freelance journalist from London, firmly proved herself as a versatile writer by publishing romantic comedies under her pen name Amy Silver, as well as huge successful thrillers under her own name. Girl On The Train was a phenomenal bestseller, which she followed up with this second thriller Into The Water.

This book reminds me a lot about The Casual Vacancy by J.K.Rowling(a magnificent read in itself). Both books have the community of a small town in common, who address the impact and involvement of all the inhabitants in solving a mysterious death, with various narrators relating the events to authorities and readers.

From the book's epigraph:

"We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection. Hallucinations ~ Oliver Sacks"

Breckford, a small town in the British Isles must come to terms with the death of a single mother. A multi-character tale is told in which the truth and the memories populating it, become a conundrum of regrets, secrets, lost opportunities and redemption. Everyone feels guilty, nobody is willing to take the blame.

Erin: "It's a fucking weird place, Beckford. It's beautiful, quite breathtaking in parts, but it's strange. It feels like a place apart, disconnected from everything that surrounds it. Of course, it is miles from anywhere - you have to drive hours to get anywhere civilized. That's if you consider Newcastle civilized, which I'm not sure I do.

Beckford is a strange place, full of odd people, with a downright bizarre history. And all through the middle of it there's this river, and that's the weirdest thing of all - it seems like whichever way you turn, in whatever direction you go, somehow you always end up back at the river.

Those who stayed behind after the latest death of Nel Abbott had to deal with the mysterious attraction to the Drowning Pool in the river for women committing suicide. It was the legends surrounding these mysterious deaths that attracted Danielle(Nel) Abbott to the pool for the book she was writing about these women and their demises.

After her own death, she leaves the unfinished manuscript, as well as a fifteen-year-old daughter behind, who has no father listed on her birth certificate.

Nickie: "Some of them went into the river willingly and some didn't, and if you asked Nickie - not that anyone would, because no one ever did - Nel Abbott went in fighting. But no one was going to ask her and no one was going to listen to her, so there really wasn't any point in her saying anything. Especially not to the police..."

From Nel's manuscript:

The Drowning Pool', Danielle Abbott (unpublished):
I decided, while in the process of trying to understand myself and my family and the stories we tell each other, that I would try to make sense of all the Beckford stories, that I would write down all the last moments, as I imagined them, in the lives of the women who went to the Beckford Drowning Pool.

Its name carries weight; and yet, what is it? A bend in the river, that’s all. A meander. You’ll find it if you follow the river in all its twists and turns, swelling and flooding, giving life and taking it, too. The river is by turns cold and clean, stagnant and polluted; it snakes through forest and cuts like steel through the soft Cheviot Hills, and then, just north of Beckford, it slows. It rests, just for a while, at the Drowning Pool."

As atmospheric as you can wish for; picturesque as you can get, and intriguing as you cannot imagine.

Although the numerous narrators created constant confusion, the storyline was never broken, and the suspense kept flowing strongly along the river of words pulling this gripping saga together.

This is an excellent crime thriller. One of those sleep-snatchers.

Another book in the same genre, worth reading is
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg.

RECOMMENDED!!!

Paula Hawkins is a British author, best known for her best-selling psychological thriller novel The Girl on the Train, which deals with themes of domestic violence, alcohol, and drug abuse. Wikipedia

Born: 26 August 1972 (age 44), Harare, Zimbabwe

Education: Keble College, Oxford

Movies: The Girl on the Train

Awards: Goodreads Choice Awards Best Mystery & Thriller, Glamour Award for Writer

Everything But The Truth by Gillian McAllister

REVIEW

In the Highlands of Scotland two people fell in love like two peas in a pod. Only to discover that they're going to have a baby and don't really know anything about each other, apart from knowing that they were meant to grow old together. 

In the picturesque little village, Oban, an old mansions and its inhabitants had a secret to protect, and in the city of Newcastle the young woman had her reasons for leaving her dream world of being a dedicated doctor. Relationships within Rachel's own family handicapped her efforts to move on and just be happy, trust people, fall in love with love and commitments in itself and feel comfortable with the life she chose to share with Jack, the freelance journalist.

The harder Jack tried to escape his history, the more obsessively Rachel delve into his past. She just could not stop herself, yet could not scrape enough courage together to tell him her own secret.

This atmospheric psychological thriller centers around forgiveness. In order to forgive others, one has to forgive oneself first and before that can actually happen, many mistakes are made and bad memories created. Lives can get ruined and futures can become meaningless, null and void, in the process. 

Richly textured and complex in character, the secrets in the book are slowly revealed. This beautifully written book leaves the reader with thought-provoking questions for which there are no easy answers. I did not like Rachel for most of the book, but in the end it was easy to understand her, and most IMPORTANTLY ... forgive her for rubbing me the wrong way. 

The ending was just perfect. I closed the book with an 'awwwwwww' that left me feeling optimistic and excited about life. 

Thus, a wonderful entertaining, suspenseful, compelling read; tense and intriguing, without ripping my guts out. 

An absolute YES! YES! YES!

BLURB

It all started with the email.

It came through to her boyfriend's iPad in the middle of the night. Rachel didn't even mean to look. She loves Jack, and she's pregnant with their child. She trusts him. But now she's seen it, she can't undo that moment, or the chain of events it has set in motion.

Why has Jack been lying about his past? Just what exactly is he hiding? And doesn't Rachel have a right to know the truth at any cost?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gillian McAllister graduated with an English degree in 2006 and is now a lawyer with a large law firm.

Her blog has been featured in various publications including Company magazine. You can find it at www.gillianmcallister.com

She lives in Birmingham with her boyfriend and cat. 

The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer

REVIEW
'“Every criminal would be an artist if he had the talent, and every artist would become a criminal if he had the guts.” 

This quote is the center of this thriller. A struggling author, with financial as well as marriage problems, encounters a man who asks him to write a book just for him, with secrecy being the key which will unlock the ultimate payment of the author's life. It will simply wash away all the hang-ups, problems, issues and everything else money could possibly solve. How can he say 'no'. 

Enters the bad and the bizarre: '“Isn’t that why all writers write? To inspire their readers?”

"Come now," Dex told Conner. "There is nothing mysterious here. Everything is exactly as it appears. Maybe even too much so. I have told you I am a fan of your work. I have said that your work inspires me. I have asked you to write a book for me. I have explained why."

J.D. Salinger inspired more than dreamy-eyed romantics on a thriller-high with his tales, written in seclusion for more than forty years in Cornish, New Hampshire. He was also the bubbles in the champagne of the infamous John Hinckley(attempted onslaught on Ronald Reagan's life), Mark David Chapman(John Lennon's assassin) and later Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. 

The fictional suspense becomes a cruel reality when the author is challenged to turn his back on his own brilliant tale, or persist and declare himself the noble innocent. 

Comments: The book addresses the debate around criminals taking their cue from their favorite author's books. However, it was not the reason why I read the book at all. I wanted to read a crime thriller, be entertained, and relish the after effects of a adrenaline booster. 

When an author can climb into my head and read my thoughts, knows what I want, from the get go, the book will be ravished, giving up everything near and dear to make it a one-sitting experience. This book was one of those.

For the less-informed, such as yours truly, this book provides the behind-the-scenes thrill of the current publishing industry - the plummeting book sales, the blogging phenomenon, the influence of online reviews being often less forgiving than the printed versions, the wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. And then of course, it confronts the reader about our reactions after reading it. 

Two ingenious tales are snaked through the narrative, involving two authors with both their families being trapped in an existential panic. They are basically honest people pushed to their limits forced to make choices they wouldn't have made under ordinary circumstances

Books can safe or destroy lives. Sometimes in fiction you had to mute reality in order to make it seem more believable. 

The most important issue addressed in the book is:where does fiction stop and reality begins. Where does the responsibility of the author ends when fiction is used by criminals as a do-it-yourself manual for real crimes. 

I am not the brightest peanut in the packet when it comes to delving deep and thoroughly into the hidden meanings behind an author's motives in writing their stories. Sometimes I do want to bestow such pain on myself, but most of the time, I use reading as a stimulant to relax!

The Salinger Contract did just that, but also left me pondering the content of the tale for weeks afterwards. The suspense thriller did what it was suppose to do - be an excellent addition to the genre. The plot, story line and drama were a relentless and riveting journey through emotions and thoughts. 

However, the author also used the drama to address social responsibility by both authors and readers. And that's where the brain-drain started for me. It made me think about it days on end. Did the writer inspired the reader? What do you think? Did I want to act upon the suggestions in the book to commit a crime? No. 

Suggestion is the most powerful tool in the world. It is used in every single action of the human existence. It preys on the subconscious. One of the most successful ads ever made was for Disprins. The initial ad had only a glass of water on the table, and one Disprin being dropped into it to relief headaches and flu symptoms. The same glass of water was again used in the follow-up ad. But this time two Disprins were dropped in. The sales immediately doubled! 

So, for what it's worth, here is my take on crime-inspired-by-books: No author can plant a disorder in a person's psyche. The disorder was already hiding in the subconscious. A book can just be a final (and probably not the first) trigger of lunatic behavior. As can be seen in the many different opinions and experiences of books by different readers, different reactions are inspired. It becomes a totally different ball game when a novel is used to hide a manual for crime. Salinger never intended to do that, nor does this book. 

Five flashing stars for this brilliant suspense thriller! There is not a single dull moment anywhere in this book. I could not stop reading it until it was all finished. I am definitely an Adam Langer fan after reading this book. 

It is a must-read for EVERYONE: wanna-be authors, reviewers and readers alike. The story in itself is a fast flowing suspense drama incorporating the highly interesting background of the publishing industry. 

If the book was intended as a commentary on social responsibility by an author, it passed with flying colors. But it was so much more than that. It is one of the best crime thrillers I have ever read. 

It is a crime in itself NOT TO READ IT!

______________________________________________________

BOOK BLURB

An enthralling literary mystery that connects some of the world’s most famous authors—from Norman Mailer and Truman Capote to B. Traven and J. D. Salinger—to a sinister collector in Chicago.

Adam Langer, the narrator of this deft and wide-ranging novel by the author of the same name, tells the intertwining tales of two writers navigating a plot neither one of them could have ever imagined. There may be no other escape than to write their way out of it.
 
Adam is a writer and stay-at-home dad in Bloomington, Indiana, drawn into an uneasy friendship with the charismatic and bestselling thriller author Conner Joyce. Conner is having trouble writing his next book, and when a menacing stranger approaches him with an odd—and lucrative—proposal, events quickly begin to spiral out of control.
 
A novel of literary crimes and misdemeanors, The Salinger Contract will delight anyone who loves a fast-paced story told with humor, wit, and intrigue.

______________________________________________________

    

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Langer is a journalist, author, playwright and filmmaker.

His work has been featured most recently on NPR's Selected Shorts, in The Best Men's Stage Monologues 2000, and The Best Women's Stage Monologues 2000, as well as in the Chicago Reader's Fiction Issue, and in the literary magazine Salt Hill. His plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and numerous other cities throughout the United States. His 2000 play, Coaster, received rave reviews from numerous publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune.

He is the writer and director of the film The Blank Page, distributed by Troma. In addition to his novels,Crossing California, Ellington Boulevard, The Washington Story and The Thieves of Manhattan, Langer is the author of three nonfiction reference works: CitySmart Guide to Chicago, Film Festival Guide, and The Madness of Art. He also wrote a memoir about his father, My Father's Bonus March.

As a journalist, he worked as a features writer and theater critic for the Chicago Reader and has had his work published in numerous newspapers and periodicals, including Mother Jones, the Chicago Tribune, Men's Journal and Rolling Stone.

Langer holds a B.A. from Vassar College and an M.A. from the University of Illinois. He was a playwright-in-residence at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a winner of a National Arts Journalism fellowship at Columbia University (2000-2001). He has lectured on writing and journalism at Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Columbia College, and Pace University. He has been a frequent radio and television guest in Chicago and New York and has been featured on such stations as WGN-TV, CNN Headline News, Fox News, E! Entertainment Network, and National Public Radio, among others.

He lives in New York City.

______________________________________________________

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Genre: Africa, Drama, Family, Fiction, Relationships, Thriller, Suspense, 

Formats: Ebook, Kindle, Nook, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook, CD,
Publishers: Knopf
Published date:  February 3rd, 2009
ISBN: 0375414495 (ISBN13: 9780375414497)
Pages: 541
Edition language: English

Literary awards: Exclusive Books Boeke Prize Nominee (2011), Indies Choice Book Award for Adult Fiction (2010), PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award Finalist (2010), Goodreads Choice Nominee for Fiction (2009)Purchase links: Amazon,    Barnes & Noble

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Amazon Book Blurb:

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

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REVIEW:

Addis Ababa - Ethiopia; Madras - India; New York & Boston -USA.

Before you read this book, consider this: the book was printed with an average of 425 words per page for 541 pages in an almost minus zero font size. That jerked my chain a bit, so I did not begin reading this book in quite the right frame of mind. 

But who in their right mind would like to put down a book beginning like this:

"My brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of Grace 1954. We took our first breath in the thin air, 8 000 feet above sea level, of the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa."

"Bound by birth, we were driven apart by bitter betrayal. No surgeon can heal the wound that divides two brothers. Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed."

The twins, Drs. Marion , and Shiva Praise Stone, were born to a nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise from the Carmalite Order of Madras, who were sent with Sister Anjali to darkest Africa to serve in hospitals. She would end up at the "Missing"(Mission) hospital of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, via Aden in Yemen, with a dark secret she cold never share.

"Sister Mary Joseph was a Malayali Christian. She could trace her faith back to St. Thomas's arrival in India from Damascus in A.D. 52. "Doubting" Thomas built his first churches in Karala well before St. Peter got to Rome."

"To her parents' chagrin, my mother became a Carmalite none,abandoning the ancient Syrian Christian tradition of St. Thomas to embrace (in her parents view) this Johnny-come-lately, pope-worshipping sect... It was a good thing her parents didn't know that she was also a nurse, which to them would mean that she soiled her hands like an untouchable."

In the first 109 pages the background to the birth is introduced and when the birth finally takes place with high drama, I sighed with relief. Pardon my momental snarkyness, but I almost put down the book and moved on. 

At first the book did not tickle my cor musculi really, it often rather annoyed the Musculus sphincter ani internus instead! The good thing was that the book distinctly distinguished itself from a romance novel by allocating 109 pages to the birth of the twins instead of to coitus, although it did challenge my knowledge of Latin and anatomy to the extreme. The good thing about romance novels is that they do not use Latin a thousand times to breath, whisper, huff, puff, holler and cry, "I Love You." 

This book did not do it either, thank goodness, but I was holding my breath! With the intensity and detail the characters' lives, especially those of the twins, were initially colored in with Latin so lavishly splashed all over it, anything was possible! And everything pointed to a great love story in the making after all!

Yes, I was equally as impressed as I was slightly blowing steam off through my nares by being constantly dropped into the world of Latin by a surgeon (Dr.Thomas Stone) whose work was his life hiding his "social retardiness" - as expressed by his colleagues. I did not want to read a medical journal at all ! 

The love of Latin genetically moves forward to the next generation. Marion would as a young boy discover the magic:

"I loved those Latin words for their dignity, their foreigness and that my tongue had to wrap around them. I felt that in learning the special language of a scholarly order, I was amassing a kind of force. This was the poor and noble side of the world, uncorrupted by secrets and trickery."

Dr. Gosh was of the opinion that the language of love and medicine was the same "Take off your shirt. Open your mouth. Take a deep breath.".

The surgeon, Dr. Thomas Stone, would have disagreed. He would have insisted on Latin near, or on, any bed! That's all he really understood. And this is where I almost gave up on the book, not because it was not well written - it was in fact brilliantly prosed from the start, but because it seemed as though I needed to order a Latin dictionary first and do at least six years of medical school before I could proceed and I was just not in the mood for it! If the storyline was to be taken away, it could have been a well-texted book on practicing medicine in the tropics.

As a young boy, Marion would receive his first stethoscope from Dr.Gosh. Was there more in this gift than the eyes could see? Was he trying to teach this boy how to find the secrets behind his parents and he and his brother's birth? :

"He invited me into a world that was not secret, but it was well hidden. You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world. But if you did, if you had that kind of curiosity, if you had an innate interest in the welfare of your fellow human beings, and if you went through that door, a strange thing happened: you left your petty troubles on the threshold. It could be addictive."

It is exactly the reason why I just could not put the bloody book down, for, believe me, bloody it was! Buckets full of it!

The narrative focuses mostly on the lives of the two twins in their growing up years and which events and people would structure their characters / personalities / destinies. In the end the expression comes to mind: "It is not what happens to you, but how you handle it, that counts."

The tale is an intense, well-researched, well-written novel introducing the fascinating societies of Addis Ababa - Ethopia, Madras - India, New York & Boston in the USA. The book blends African politics, people, compassion, love, fast paced adventure and fiction in such a way that all readers from all walks of life, especially hospital-story junkies, interested in this beautiful but harsh African continent, will find some aspect of the book agreeable and worth reading. 

One of my favorite Mark Twain aphorisms is: "I can live for two months on a good compliment."

For me it is not a compliment but strings of words having me wonder around in sheer delirious bliss! Abraham Verghese rooted me to the book with prose like this:

"There was three spaced knocks on the door of Matron's office. "Come in," Matron said,and with those words Missing was on a course different than anyone could have imagined. It was at the start of the rainy season, when Addis was stunned into wet submission."

There are sweet anecdotal moments such as this: Dr. Marion Praise Stone, the narrator, recounts a moment in their childhood:

"In our household, you had to dive into the din and push to the front if you wanted to be heard. The foghorn voice was Ghosh's, echoing and tailing off into laughter. Hema was the songbird, but when provoked her voice was as sharp as Saladin's scimitar,which, according to my Richard the Lion Hearted and the Crusades, could divide a silk scarf allowed to float down onto the blade's edge. Almaz, our cook, may have been silent on the outside, but her lips moved constantly, whether in prayer or song,no one knew. Rosina took silence as a personal offense, and spoke into empty rooms and chattered into cupboards. Genet, almost six years old of age, was showing signs of taking after her mother, telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology."

Initially there is a deceitful tranquility present in the rhythm of the prose. The author used an ingenious method to pacify the reader while having an addictive mixture of tension and drama bubbling and boiling underneath. 

Marion never wanted to sit in the twin-stroller playing with his wooden truck like his brother. Marion wanted an adult view on the world. Rosina had to constantly carry him around. 

The epiphany, for me, happened here:

P.184: "...the kitchen was alive. Steam rises in plumes as Almaz clangs lids on and off the pots. The silver weight on the pressure cooker jiggles and whistles. Almaze's sure hands chop onions, tomatoes, and fresh coriander, making hillocks that dwarf the tiny mounds of ginger and garlic. ... A mad alchemist she throws a pinch of this, a fistful of that, then wets her fingers and flings that moisture into the mortar. She pounds with the pestle, the wet, crunchy thunk thunk soon changes to the sound of stone on stone.

...Mustard seeds explode in the hot oil. She holds a lid over the pan to fend off the missiles. Rat-a-tat! like hail on the tin roof. She adds the cumin seeds, which sizzles, darken and crackle. A dry, fragrant smoke chases out the mustard scent. Only then are the onions added, handfuls of them, and now the sound is that of life being spawned in a primordial fire.

Rosina abruptly hands me over to Almaz... I whimper on Almaz's shoulder, perilously close to the bubbling cauldrons. Almaz puts down the laddle and shifts me to her hip. Reaching into her blouse, grunting with effort, she fishes out her breast.

"Here it is," she says, putting it in my hands for safekeeping...Almaz, who hardly speaks, resumes stirring, humming a tune. It is as if the breast no more belongs to her than does the laddle."

This scene above acted as a metaphor for this book: so seemingly uncomplicated, innocent and serene on the surface, but exploding with energy under the lid! What was hidden in the mixture would ultimately add meaning and definition, like exquisite aromas from a pot-pourri of herbs and spices to the people's lives. The experience will be hot and penetrating; sweet and scrumptious, heavy and often "indigestably" cruel.

From then on things started to happen rapidly, the drama increased leaving the reader mesmerized and in complete wonder!

The story was brilliantly constructed, although it could have been a 100 pages shorter, in my opinion. There were almost an endless role of "Latin-ish"-like hospital scenes that leaves the impression of the author expressing opinions through a novel instead of getting his ideas published elsewhere. I was surprised, when thinking back on the role of each person in the narrative, how each one of them made an amazing contribution to the story! The characters was well developed; the denouement at the end of all the elements a huge surprise. The story completes a full unbelievable circle, which really had me sitting back in total amazement. The end left me breathless....and yes speechless...! And when I started recounting all the elements in the book I was amazed at the unusual brilliant tale it was.

A Great read!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine.

Born of Indian parents who were teachers in Ethiopia, he grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. When Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, he completed his training at Madras Medical College and went to the United States for his residency as one of many foreign medical graduates. Like many others, he found only the less popular hospitals and communities open to him, an experience he described in one of his early New Yorker articles, The Cowpath to America.

From Johnson City, Tennessee, where he was a resident from 1980 to 1983, he did his fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine, working at Boston City Hospital for two years. It was here that he first saw the early signs of the HIV epidemic and later, when he returned to Johnson City as an assistant professor of medicine, he saw the second epidemic, rural AIDS, and his life took the turn for which he is most well known - his caring for numerous AIDS patients in an era when little could be done and helping them through their early and painful deaths was often the most a physician could do.

His work with terminal patients and the insights he gained from the deep relationships he formed and the suffering he saw were intensely transformative; they became the basis for his first book, My Own Country : A Doctor's Story, written later during his years in El Paso, Texas. Such was his interest in writing that he decided to take some time away from medicine to study at the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. Since then, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Forbes.com, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

Following Iowa, he became professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso, Texas, where he lived for the next 11 years. In addition to writing his first book, which was one of five chosen as Best Book of the Year by Time magazine and later made into a Mira Nair movie, he also wrote a second best-selling book, The Tennis Partner : A Story of Friendship and Loss, about his friend and tennis partner's struggle with addiction. This was a New York Times' Notable Book.