2006-05-18 Beautiful, true and tragic

There are few books which really touch me in the way that this one does. It is gorgeous and painful, wonderful and tragic all in the same breath. Most importantly and skillfully of all, it captures that once-in-a-lifetime moment that we all experience - the moment where we should stop, act, grab hold of the things that are precious to us and hold onto them with religious fervour, but somehow we don't. We keep walking on, abandoning the beauty in front of our face, in the vain hope that there is something better round the corner.

At the heart of this novel lies one question. What if this moment, the one that is happening here, now, is the only chance I'll get? What if this is the only time I might ever find the one person who can make me happy? Should I gamble everything on this moment? What if I'm wrong? Worse still, if this is the moment - if this is "the one", what happens if I do nothing? Will I have lost the only chance I EVER had to be happy?

This book makes me feel 19 years old again, makes me cry and yearn and wish for salvation all at once. I haven't read anything as touching or as true in a long long time.