Finally finished reading this one today. And I can’t say enough good things about it. I hate to say it only because everyone else has, and because it’s so cliche, but this is indeed the best book I’ve read all year. I came across it by chance, having never heard of it or Andrew Davidson before. I read the description about a burn victim’s affair with a mental patient. It struck my interest enough to buy it, and to pick it up and read it, and I’m very glad I did.

The book is much more than an affair between two people that the world (or God) has been cruel to. Andrew Davidson has penned a multitude of characters and storylines that are both complex and entertaining. I like a book that has me flipping back through the pages to consult passages I’ve already read, or lying awake at night thinking about and trying to figure it out. I’m still questioning if the current people in the unnamed narrator’s lives were also people he knew in his past lives. As you may have figured out, a huge part of the book is about reincarnation and the narrator’s struggle with a higher power.

This book has a touch of everything…fine food, literature, pornography, drugs, schizophrenia, art, Victorians, Japanese legends, Vikings, Medieval times, science, medicine, religion, and lots of elaborate lists of its own…the author was obviously inspired by numerous beliefs and resources and amazingly compiled them all into a book and into a plot and made it work. As Marianne settles down with her paramour and tells him stories of how they once knew each other in another life, I too couldn’t wait to listen. The book is complex and multi-leveled and often points a finger at the reader in real life society and makes you ashamed of how you might perceive others sometimes who have been scarred physically. This is a love story of sorts, but you will soon discover that sex does not become an issue between these characters. The author has taken predictable themes out and kept the story fresh.

If you enjoy a good story that challenges you, a story that you will definitely take something away from, then I highly recommend this one. I know I will be suggesting it to others for a long time to come. I can’t wait for Davidson’s next!