The World

by Bill Gaston

A recently divorced, early retiree accidentally burns down his house on the day he pays off the mortgage, only to discover that an uncharacteristic oversight has pitted him against an impassive corporate bureaucracy. An old friend of his, a middleaged musician, enters into a final negotiation with the pain of esophageal cancer. Her father, who left his family years ago to practise Buddhism in Nepal, ends his days in a facility for Alzheimer’s patients. These three are tied together by a book called The World , written by the old man in his youth. Possibly autobiographical, the book tells the story of a historian who unearths a cache of letters, written in Chinese, in an abandoned leper colony off the coast of Victoria. He and the young Chinese translator fall in love, only to betray each other in the cruelest way possible, each violating what the other reveres most. Magnificently written, structurally daring, and a masterful blend of imagination and observation, The World is arguably the greatest achievement so far of Bill Gaston’s career.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Canadian Literature, Short Stories

376 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 2012

Reviews

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three first person stories and a book within a book: “structurally daring”, the blurb says. Mmm-hmm.

Stuart’s drive across Canada to see an old friend, Melody, who he has not seen for decades but wrote to him now she has cancer; Mel’s relationship over one month with Stu and her father Hal, who had long ago written a highly-acclaimed book, also called The World; and finally the same month as seen by Hal. The three are linked by readings from the fictional book, which is based on a real leper colony that existed just off Victoria in the 19th century

So, Victoria to Toronto: every inconsequential town (sorry, Golden, Assiniboia, Kenora ...!) is just where Gaston says it is on a map – oh it’s accurate all right, but that doesn’t really give the trip a whole lot of meaning, and along the way, Stu’s random encounters add up to little – a one-night stand in Banff with a traveller heading west, an eye operation, a pointless detour hours out of his way to help a hitchhiker, a rambling conversation with the guy who takes Stu’s clapped-out car off his hands – and most tediously of all - way, way more information than anyone should reasonably have to know about the insurance adjusting business (the catalyst for his journey is that he accidentally burnt his house down, just after forgetting to pay the insurance).
I suppose this could make up a great Experiential Road Trip novel, but after reading on I felt that it was an attempt to make Stu as significant as Mel, by stringing out incidents until his chapter was as long as hers.

Mel’s story is really all The World should have been about. She is initially rather disconcerted when Stu turns up unannounced, but quite pleased in the end, especially when Stu seems to form a bond with her father. Hal only recently returned to her life (he had been in Nepal for years), and they had only a short time to become reacquainted before he developed Alzheimers. In that time he helped her come to terms with dying. Mel’s mother had also died just before Hal came home. There is so much potential here, so it’s a shame that isn’t really explored with much depth. It all unfolds with too much detachment. There’s more loving, lingering, description of food and cooking than there is of human interaction, and there are several scenes that just don’t seem believable.

... I mean, if you had decided to end your life within the month, would you spend any of it in an insurance company head office, even if it was to support an old friend?

In this chapter, Stu is presented as a nice and considerate man, but a bit clingy and peripheral, and it’s that fact that makes his road trip seem so irrelevant.

Hal’s much shorter part is an honest and sympathetic portrayal of senility but it is necessarily vague and confused (he mistakes Stu for a monk from his Nepal years, and doesn’t recognize Mel or his own novel at all), it’s mainly a vehicle to allow Stu to finish readings from Hal’s World

So, there it is, the “daring structure”. I think the problem is that it is too much about the structure. Hal’s World is a sort of parable about academic integrity and may be autobiographical, as he hints to Mel. But it doesn’t actually mirror anything in the "real" World and it is lifeless and stilted (as Mel herself comments, so is that intentional?) It must also have been very short as it appears to be told almost in full. I found that reading two novels in parallel wasn’t at all rewarding and the inner one suffered most. I thought, if it was supposed to be so good, why not just write a short story?

Plus, Gaston doesn’t show, he tells. Driblets of Mel’s and Stu’s history are leaked out – Hal’s too -“she had done this, he had done that, he remembered they had gone there”. I read his Sointula long ago – before Goodreads – and I don’t remember it being this flat.

Not a bad book, but a bit of a disappointment.

[Doriana Bisegna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have rarely if ever read a book within a book within a book...let me explain!! Hal who is suffering from Alzheimer's was a Buddhist monk in Tibet (Canadian)and while there wrote a book called The World. Fast forward to present day, his daughter Melody who is dying of cancer reunites with a high school friend Stuart. While Stuart and Melody visit her father, they decide to read the book back to him as a way to pass the time. The World is about a researcher and his translator trying to make sense of a tin box of papers found on an old leper colony in B.C. Those papers are another story written by a Chinese female leper who was banished to this island in B.C. This is what I mean by a story within a story within a story...quite an amazing feat by an author!! I loved the characters since they were all battling with their own tragedy. The beginning of the book opens with Stuart setting his house on fire without his even knowing. This starts the book off on a very humorous bend and continues as he drives from B.C. to Toronto. Once he reunites with his long lost friend Melody the book takes on a more fatalistic bend since Melody is dying from cancer. This book is wonderfully written and brings forth the history of the leper colony in B.C. Having visited the leper colony in Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, I was fascinated by this piece of Canadian history.

[Lexie · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOTS OF SPOILERS! Beware!

What's it like to lose your home to fire on the day that you finally paid off your mortgage? To die of esophageal cancer while inventing a cosmopolitan menu of foods for your funeral? To experience the irretrievable witherings of mind -- one thought at a time? In other words, to be utterly lost, even as life keeps you tethered to the world?

This is a generous, humane, sometimes hilarious story. Stuart, who inadvertently set his house aflame with the (supposed) ashes of his mortgage papers, heads across Canada, from Victoria to Toronto, in his old Datsun (30+ years -- he can't recall exactly), with nothing but the sudden void of his life. On the way, he chases, by phone -- often, by pay phone, an alarming rarity now -- an insurance agent who slaps him on the metaphorical back with hearty bullshit, evades every question, but eventually relinquishes a name or two: insurance company top-dogs in Toronto. Stuart's got a date with destiny ...

He's also going to find an old friend whom he's not been in touch with for a few decades. Her name is Mel, and she's soon to die. She's ready to go...and more than willing. As a gourmand who's forced by cancer to ingest nourishment via canned, "naturally flavoured" fluid through a g-tube, she's prepping her memorial menu with "Prawns Afterlife" (complete with ghost peppers -- they might speed your own demise along!), "Duck Satan," and "Macaroons DNA."

Meanwhile, Mel's father, Hal, an adept in Tibetan Buddhist practice, loses his mind, one mantra at a time, to Alzheimer's disease. He's written a book that he can't recall writing -- a story that Mel (while she can still speak) and Stuart read to him at the elders' residence he's now housed in. Hal's ability to think falls away like the mala beads skitter off his wrist when a snarky nursing-home aide grabs his bracelet of prayers to restrain him. Sorrow and occasional silliness (the word "silly" is etymologically related to the word "blessed") infuse Hal's second-to-second streams of thought (or lack thereof) ... If a mind can be lost gently, here it happens.

All of it is chronicled with meticulous insight and pacing ... in a wise, knowing voice ... with existential hilarity. If there's a weak link in the book, it's the story that Hal himself composed (a novel? an imagined memoir? a fantasy?). What does resonate through this invention is what it's like to live with leprosy, and worse, with the relentless stigma of the disease.

There's constant occasion for heartbreak in The World ... and almost as much occasion for us to feel a giggle burble up from the depths for how we're all in this together ...

Quotes:

~ There he was sitting out front in his car, freshly crushed, love convulsing inside him.

~ He pictured squinting locals on stools, tense with bizarre ideas...

~ ... Mel gave him pause by adding, "If you believe in nothin', that's all you're gonna get." Stuart would get used to Mel dropping her g's when she said anything grand. It was like she had to get tough with the embarrassing bigger ideas. When she came out to him, for instance, she dropped g's galore.

~ She claimed that "the diff" [between men and women] kept him from revealing his depths of selfish sexual depravity common to all men, and he claimed it kept her from spewing the endless emotional pornography of womankind.

~ ... tonight it felt like everything he'd lost over the years by vague degree had just now been snatched from him whole, leaving a huge, raw gouge in his body.

~ Wooden skin is what a house was. You could float around in it, mindless and safe. It was like living happily within your own armpit.

~ "...as we practice our fear of strangers; as we witness our finite lifespan; as we suffer our onset of age and decreptitude--aren't we little different from lepers?"

~ He drove, imagining Toronto. The likely scenario kept coming back: he's standing in the vast glass lobby of a Toronto tower. There's white noise and his ears feel pressurized. He can't get past the curved marble desk where three uniformed guards sit verifying people's appointments. There is no directory on the wall ... Men wearing identical suits, adepts of this world, murmur on cells as they emerge from or disappear into the bank of soundless elevators..."

~ Face to face. He needed to see somebody face to face. How could one human ruin another when they were in the same room together?

~ This trip was no fresh start. Whatever had begun was still happening. His house was still burning down.

~ ... he noticed at his elbow a newspaper article, circled in red marker, about a new edition of a junior dictionary that had culled words such as dandelion and willow and nun. Words added included lol and facebook.

~ Life becomes a search for pleasure that doesn't bite back. Moderate pleasures. Loyal pleasures.

~ She is starting more and more to believe that a soul, if it exists at all, won't travel so much as it will spread. Widen out in all directions at once. Soon to have the scant awareness of wind.

~ Edith Piaf sounded like morphine.

~ (of chemotherapy) ... all the while you're the shocked child waking up in a tired old body.

~ She told him a favourite story, about the discovery of "farmer's lung" by British medical researchers not much more than a hundred years ago. The Industrial Revolution had peaked; the skies were filled with coal smoke. Some autopsies were showing an "odd pink" in the lungs of certain men, who were determined to have come from rural areas, so they called the mysterious disease "farmer's lung." Incredibly, it took decades to realize that pink, not dark grey, was the healthy one.

~ Awareness seemed to radiate from inside his body in a way that bypassed his brain.

~ She had a pinched, brow-knit concern about her that made everything she said dire, even "hello."

~ But I am fearful now. My fear grows from hope, isn't that strange? When hopeless, there is nothing to fear.

~ ... it was the smile of a sunset.

~ She was getting better at finding the level of pain she could live with. She wanted to stay clear, especially when the time came. She would not become a glassy-eyed loaf.

~ His discipline was vulnerability.

~ The first time he didn't know her she could still feel an emptiness that blasted all the way down to her feet.

~ It's good to maintain the boundaries. Chaos in a container.

~ To any who read this, a warning. Love must be dragon-eyed.

~ She's had her hair dyed, a noble dark walnut. It doesn't reflect the red mind inside. And you can smell it, the chemical hair. What devils women put on themselves.

~ How was it possible that one blessing could wither, and by its withering threaten all happiness?

~ "Anyway, seeing my daughter, seeing Jen. It mostly just felt stilted. I don't really know how I fit in." / "Unconditional. Unconditional love. You spread it out. No fitting in required." What else to say? "It really is that big ... You just love. No thought of yourself."

~ He sees himself suddenly an old man. Now he's himself again. Now into the future, old. But here he is. Is time what he's seeing? Is this time? / With any luck, we rot into wisdom. Words fall away...

~ Part of him felt he knew everything, and always had, but was too happily absorbed watching shadows on the wall of his cave.

~ The frozen set of his shoulders was that of a man too weak ever to apologize. He was a man afraid of and blind to the grand kindness that was all around them...

~ It's a simple equation, to profit from another's pain. It is as simple and clear as the sun and moon. Greed is a blade that draws its own blood.

[Pooker · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my all time favourite books is The Good Body by this author, so I was expecting a lot from this book. Maybe not the whole world as the title of this book suggests, but I definitely had expectations of being charmed and amused.

What happens in this book might seem all too dreadful to say one enjoyed it. The book is told in thirds. The first third is from the perspective of Stuart, a hapless 50-something retired shops teacher, who is alone and has accidentally burned his house down. He did so while burning his mortgage papers. He took all his retirement funds to pay off his mortgage. To make matters worse, it seems he was uninsured because he failed to renew his insurance. So he's homeless and broke. He decides to pack up his ancient Datsun and drive across country to prevail upon a former lover, Melody.

The 2nd third of the book is told from Mel's perspective. Mel is dying of throat cancer. She is near the end, mobile enough but on morphine and using a feeding tube. Her father, Hal is in a care home suffering from Alzheimer's and has little short term or long term memory. Melody loves her father, even though he apparently abandoned her mother to run off to Tibet to be a Buddhist. Hal wrote a book during his life, also entitled the World. He wrote it as something of an apology to his wife. The book is, in part, a love story set in a leper colony. This story runs through the book as Melody and Stuart read the book to Hal and the other care home residents when they visit Hal. Melody reads the book, not only for something to do but in the hopes that her father will recognize something in it and remember.

The third portion of the book is told from Hal's confused and somewhat fearful perspective. Melody has now died, although Hal is not aware of that, and it is Stuart who regularly visits and reads to him.

All of this might seem to be too depressing and tragic, but it is not. The first portion, involving Stuart and all the pathetic things that befall him, is delightfully funny, sometimes even laugh out loud funny. But, as the book proceeds, humour evolves into something that is caring and lovely and oh so touchingly human. Mel lives life on her own terms and indeed plans for her death including what foods she wants her survivors to experience at her funeral.

Gaston presents characters that are wholly believable and fragile and human in a world that is wholly believable and fragile and filled with humanity. Delightful.

[Rod Raglin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s like Bill Gaston, the award winning Canadian author, had four ideas but none that could sustain the character examination and plot points to carry an entire novel. What to do? Why not include them all and loosely (and unconvincingly) link them together? This is how his novel, The World, appeared to this reader.

The first story is about Stuart, a retired high school shop teacher who celebrates paying off his mortgage by torching the documents and accidentally burning down his house, only to discover he hasn’t kept up the insurance premiums. Stuart’s story is about loss – loss of his dwelling, loss of his wife to divorce, and loss of his estranged adult daughter. This is typical latter-life crisis stuff and Gaston doesn’t provide any new insights.

For some reason, rather than deal with the crisis at hand, Gaston has Stuart drive across the country (boring travelogue) to visit an old friend who is dying of cancer. The only thing that makes Stuart’s story at all convincing is he is such a goof the reader can actually imagine him doing this.

Story 2. Melody is interesting in a macabre way as a Gaston details day to day life of a victim of terminal cancer. The character of Stuart is now only used as a foil for Mel to play off and thus tell her story. A lot of her story has to do with reconnecting with her father, Hal.

Story 3. Hal is also dying, from Alzheimer’s. The last third of the book is ripe with black humour about a person losing their mind. Hal has published one novel and Stuart reads this to him when he visits him at the care home.

Story 4. This is the story contained in Hal’s novel and is about the turn of the century leper colony, which is actually a prison in that the lepers are being isolated from society and have no means of leaving. The story involves a professor and his translator who come into possession of documents supposedly written by Li, the only woman on this small island.

Read this book if you want some insights into the machinations of multi-national insurance companies, how a feeding tube works for those who can no longer swallow, a brave attempt to describe how it is to have advanced Alzheimer’s, and some interesting history on the leper colony of D’arcy Island.

However, if you think that these four stories will somehow converge to bring about a satisfactory conclusion, you’ll be disappointed.

[Tricia Dower · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely book, full of subtle humour and compassion. I read it over the space of a week and was happy to slip into it each night before I went to sleep, eager to reunite with Stuart, Melody and Hal, the three characters who each have a section. Hal's is the only one in first person and it's a brilliant glance into the mind of a Buddhist with Alzheimer's who has written a book called "The World" that may or may not be autobiographical. Stuart is a Charley Brown kind of character who accidentally burns down his house not knowing he neglected to pay his insurance premium. He spends much of the book trying to salvage his situation and the impetuous decision to visit a dying friend (Melody) he hasn't seen in decades turns out golden. Stuart's section is both comical and poignant -- I especially enjoyed the lice. Mel's is mostly poignant with her having decided how to take control over her dying body; Stuart's unannounced arrival complicates that but also offers her a solution to the problem of who will care about her father when she's gone. Hal's section provided the most delight for me, including the surprise ending to the novel within the novel -- The World. A compassionate book that starts gently and builds in power.

[Heike Lettrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

The World was a fun read. Written in three parts, the protagonists shift and perspectives are made more rich with the shift. A man loses everything except a desperate sense of adventure that makes him leave the west coast and head east; a woman rekindles an old friendship just before she commits suicide; a man, with a short term memory capacity of about 30 seconds, grapples with his sense of time, belonging, and really: just getting by.

It's a quirky book, engaging, and full of life. The beginning third was my favourite, but I was impressed with the challenge of the third section: writing from the perspective of a person with Alzheimer's. What a feat, and treat!

[Michael Peiffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Its a story within a story and really shows you several different lives and surviving challenges with humour. The Budhist feel is infectious. It helps me accept the world we live in. I highly reccomend it.

[Mark Hazell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed Bill Gaston's books for a long time, and The World is no exception -- this may be his finest work, full of wonderful characters, stories within stories -- I couldn't put it down.

[Andrea Demers · Rating 5 out of 5]

The right book for me at the right time. Confronts head on fears about aging, life, death, friendship, memory. It was so inviting to live inside the characters heads - even though each of them is internally struggling with fear for the future. So many funny and thoughtful details that were called back throughout the story. For such heavy plot points/themes the story was actually handled with some subtlety. I don't usually read things multiple times but I could see coming back to this in the future. Can't wait to read more from this writer.

[Kyeren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book within a book within a book, and each as captivating as the next. The World is utterly readable and satisfying, and also quite a literary feat. In addition to the nesting-books, Gaston also offers us three narrators, each voice unique, engrossing and completely believable, including a man with dementia who's so deftly written that I re-read the section. I've given this book as a gift, because it's a broadly appealing and beautifully crafted work of fiction.

[Geraldine · Rating 3 out of 5]

very enjoyable novel. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character,their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings-Joseph Campbell i am looking forward to reading more from this Canadian Author

[Mike Heenan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book until that last few chapters when we lose the main characters and drift off into the book(s) within the book. Pity.

[Lj · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A very interesting read. A very Canadian read. Emotionally grabbing with very relatable characters. Thank you Mr. Gaston, you can thank a visit to Gabriola for this purchase .

[Elizabeth]

This novel begins wisely with the following quote:

"Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings."
--Joseph Conrad in "An Outpost of Progress"

It is a profound book of the so called human comedy which left me with one funny image of a man with a monacle which was the humorous contraption that he had to substitute for his glasses after a veterinarian sat on them.

This novel taught me one thing I didn't already know: there was a leper colony on D'Arcy Island just north of Victoria between 1894 to 1924! It is shocking to learn that Chinese lepers were banished and left there to rot even though the medical community at the time new how to cure it. They also knew it was not as contagious as people had been led to believe. In New Brunswick there were also cases of leprosy during the same time period, however those lepers received medical treatment in a hospital. The only thing that that differed between the two groups is that one was composed of white people and the other of Chinese immigrants. When I first read about this I thought it must be fiction because my Canadian History classes in college never even mentioned it. The truth often is a well guarded secret.

I found it rather ironic that he gave Naomi a Jewish name, something which I thought was unconvincing for this Chinese woman. Naomi is also the woman in the bible who changed her name to Mara which means "bitter" according to biblical sources and is the incarnation of evil which surrounds the universe in the Buddhist pantheon. But is the Naomi in this story Jewish? I really don't think so. In the story, we aren't told she is from the Buddhist tradition either though. Conversely, other characters have names that perhaps represent them just a little too much. For people who like to see the bad guy lose, this is the book for you.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a bloody disappointment. I really enjoyed this book up to the last 70 pages which drifted off abandoning the two main characters I had enjoyed so much...the 50 something dufus who burned down his house the same day he burned his mortgage, his trip across Canada from Victoria to Toronto to visit his friend from way back when who was dying of Cancer and her father who had written one book and now had Alzheimer's. He was also a practicing Buddhist monk. The final 70 pages however are a total mish mash of a story within a story and a rather tedious one at that even with the mild surprise at the end. Gone are the guy who burned down his house except as a reader to the man with Alzheimer's and his friend who had cancer disappears altogether. To add to the confusion what was an endearing Buddhist monk with Alzheimer's becomes the narrator of the final 70 pages confusing at best and over done. It's like Gaston either got tired of his book or didn't know how to end it so characters just drop off the face of the earth. Any profoundness that was evident in the novel earlier with its full slate of characters turns into a profoundly disappointed and puzzling ending. Its almost like he started another novel.

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Be prepared for a bit of jumping around in this novel. It is written in three parts concentrating on three different people. First we meet Stuart who in a moment of rosy happiness lights a fire that empties his life of all his possessions. Then Mel takes over, a friend of Stuart's from twenty years ago who is now dying of cancer. Lastly, we meet her father, Hal, who lived as a Buddhist in Tibet for years and is now in a hospital in Montreal with Alzheimer's disease. I found the first two sections very engaging with an easy flow, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad. Hal's portion is short and overlaid by a book he wrote years previously on the history of the leper colony on Darcy Island just off Victoria I'm not sure why that was in there, and actually toward the end I began to skip over those parts. I did enjoy meeting the three characters and did not find the separation of the narratives a problem at all. Kept me interested.

[Sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's funny is that I grew up down the street from Bill, went to school with his sons, played with his daughters and I remember seeing him only rarely. He was almost like a ghost. I guess it takes time to write such brilliant work. I always knew he was an author, but nothing could have prepared me for this. Perhaps it is because he writes about my old street Winchester Road, or my old High School Lambrick Park, or the now out of business Gordan Head store that this book touched me so much. But, I don't think so. His writing is emotive and fluid and you will find your heart jumping out to his characters who come so alive it seems unfair that they are confined to the pages on which they lay. Pick up a copy for Fall and take your time with it. A very lovely book.

[Barbara Sibbald]

Concerns the nature of history, memory and personal history: What holds significance for us may be forgotten as minutia of not import by the other. The premise is interesting: a man invests his pension to pay off his house; the house burns to the ground & he finds he's forgotten to pay his insurance premium. In this however, it doesn't quite ring true: our protagonist, Stuart, is much too organized to let that happen. And so I almost abandoned the book there. However, I persevered and the rest, the trip of self-discovery across Canada, the reconnection, the "happy" or at least resolved ending - all these worked well.

[Jhodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A middle aged, recently divorced man has retired and taken his lump sum pension to pay off the remainder of his mortgage. he tears up the mortgage document and burs it and does not realize that embers ares til buring and the next day, his house burms down. He discovers that he has not paid his home insurance becasue the paperwork had been mailed to his business address and he had not chnaged it. He reminesces about old days and goes on a journey to kill time and discovers joy again. Not brilliantly written.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first third of this book was so depressing that I considered not finishing it; however, the writing was just interesting enough that I continued. I found the rest of the book well written, with an interesting story line and depth. It seemed to be moving toward a meaningful resolution, but instead veered into what seemed to me to be a disjointed, odd conclusion. It could well be that I just didn't get it - I accept that. But I still have found value and pleasure in reading this book.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of the books for the pre-writers' festival class. A very thought provoking book within a book within a book. The narrative is divided into thirds. Each section of the book is from the perspective of one of the three main characters with time moving forward throughout. Although each of the main characters has an extreme situation (loss of home, terminal cancer, Alzheimer's), the story does not seem improbable nor unrealistic.

[Julia Denholm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just don't get schadenfreude, so the whole first section (the "Stuart" section) of he book fell flat for me. But I pressed on and was rewarded by the rest of the book. A good road-trip read, especially if you are amused by the misfortunes of others (at least to start with). I loved the more serious final two-thirds of this novel.

[Lynn Kearney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Canadian author is new to me. Very moving story-within-a-story.

[S.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started out well, my interest flagged, and then I enjoyed the ending part. I didn't love it.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine story. I like the way it is written. Very personable style. I will read more Gaston when I get the chance.

[Ann Dadswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and touching story that is actually two stories, one wrapped inside the other, and yet the author never strays or becomes confusing. I loved it.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story. Not sure if the structure matched the story.

[Lisette · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book by an author you've never read before

[Janet Hamilton-davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this novel. It made me wince but also laugh out loud. A great storyteller.