So I Am Glad

It would be far too easy to merely state that this book is about a lonely woman, who meets a man, who claims to be the reincarnation of Cyrano de Bergerac. This is an emotionally complex story with some of the most beautiful language put to paper that I've read in years. There are paragraphs I want to cut out and put on the wall as keepsakes. This is certainly not your everyday romantic fantasy. So I Am Glad is just as much about pain as it is about love.

“In her first full-length novel to appear in this country, the prize-winning Scottish novelist A.L. Kennedy returns to the themes of isolation, emotional destitution and love with an ambitious, darkly funny book … “ Jennifer Wilson finds herself living in a house with Savinien, who claims to be Cyrano de Bergerac. The story is clever, the dialogue quick and realistic. Parts of the tale have a surreal, dream-like quality. A clever story which tells of love found and lost, and the price one pays for loving.

I don't give up on my books and it may be that there is too much going on in my own life to deal with an AL Kennedy at the moment, but this was quite unfathomable. The dialogue is difficult to follow, the story, although potentially interesting, rambled too much and I gave up.

Abandoning because I just can't get into this book. At all. I struggled through half of it yesterday, and finally decided that life was too short. I'm giving it two stars because I'm pretty sure it's not you, A. L. Kennedy, it's me.

Abandoning because I just can't get into this book. At all. I struggled through half of it yesterday, and finally decided that life was too short. I'm giving it two stars because I'm pretty sure it's not you, A. L. Kennedy, it's me.

Awed.