I was not sure about this book, thinking it would play more
with the mystical themes revealed early one, but which spent a lot more time as
a family drama unfolding separately for each offspring. The way people react to
information they think will impact their lives is an interesting theme and the
different responses were well realised, but overall it was a less than
satisfying story for me.
‘It's 1969, and holed
up in a grimy tenement building in New York's Lower East Side is a travelling
psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four
Gold children, too young for what they're about to hear, sneak out to learn
their fortunes.
Over the years that
follow, the siblings must choose how to live with the prophecies the
fortune-teller gave them that day. Will they accept, ignore, cheat or defy
them? Golden-boy Simon escapes to San Francisco, searching for love; dreamy
Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician; eldest son Daniel tries to control fate as
an army doctor after 9/11; and bookish Varya looks to science for the answers
she craves.’
The Ballad of Halo Jones Volume 2 by Alan Moore and Ian
Gibson
Another interesting concept provided as a mechanic to this
story, but not what it is about at all. I got lost in what the author was
trying to get across to me and I found the narrative ponderous and a bit
tiresome.
‘In a country teetering
on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent
Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and
are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.
When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and
bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk
people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates,
Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their
homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.’
I was intrigued by the premise of this story and found it
entertaining in execution. Again, as in many of these books, there are deeper
themes at play throughout, but they do not takeover or distract too much from
the narrative. And I do like the title very much.
‘Listen.
All the world forgets
me. First my face, then my voice, then the consequences of my deeds.
So listen. Remember
me.
My name is Hope Arden,
and you won't know who I am. We've met before - a thousand times. But I am the
girl the world forgets.
It started when I was
sixteen years old. A slow declining, an isolation, one piece at a time.
A father forgetting to
drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A teacher
who forgets to chase my missing homework. A friend who looks straight through
me and sees a stranger.
No matter what I do,
the words I say, the people I hurt, the crimes I commit - you will never
remember who I am.
That makes my life
tricky. But it also makes me dangerous...’
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