Helpful Score: 2
Okay...so this book was really very good. BUT, I gotta tell you, its so intense and overpowering, I sometimes felt like looking up from the pages and taking a deep breath. I havent read a book that made me feel like that since I read Anne Rices Violin way back when.
The plot? A very narcissistic male porn star narrates this tale, that starts with the moment his car careens over an edge and erupts into flames, burning him beyond recognition. Its first person, which adds to the sense of being completely overwhelmed by the emotions hes going through. Hes a cynic, and before his accident, was beautiful and rich and sexually adept, even if he was still a cynic inside. After the accident, he figures hes got nothing left to live for, and plans to survive his stay in the burn ward, living only for the time when he can leave the ward and commit a very carefully planned suicide. Its what he lives for, because he figures hes got nothing else.
And then, Marianne walks into his room. She tells him that theyd been lovers in medieval Germany and many other lifetimes before that as well. She tells him shes been alive for 700 years. She starts telling him stories...their stories. And really, thats only the beginning.
Marianne is part Scheherazade, part fanatic, part lover, part crazy...but all of those parts are so beautifully and wonderfully described. This is a very deep, moving book. Its not easy to get through, since the narrator goes into quite graphic detail about what happens to him in the burn ward, but its good. Really good. There was an intense satisfaction when I finished it. And, to be truthful, even the darker parts with the graphic, sometimes gruesome detail about his wounds and what he goes through, those are told in such a way, that you really get his voice - his cynicism, and in some parts, I definitely got his self-depreciating humor. And that made it a little easier to read through those parts (but I still winced). STILL...its definitely worth reading. Definitely.
The plot? A very narcissistic male porn star narrates this tale, that starts with the moment his car careens over an edge and erupts into flames, burning him beyond recognition. Its first person, which adds to the sense of being completely overwhelmed by the emotions hes going through. Hes a cynic, and before his accident, was beautiful and rich and sexually adept, even if he was still a cynic inside. After the accident, he figures hes got nothing left to live for, and plans to survive his stay in the burn ward, living only for the time when he can leave the ward and commit a very carefully planned suicide. Its what he lives for, because he figures hes got nothing else.
And then, Marianne walks into his room. She tells him that theyd been lovers in medieval Germany and many other lifetimes before that as well. She tells him shes been alive for 700 years. She starts telling him stories...their stories. And really, thats only the beginning.
Marianne is part Scheherazade, part fanatic, part lover, part crazy...but all of those parts are so beautifully and wonderfully described. This is a very deep, moving book. Its not easy to get through, since the narrator goes into quite graphic detail about what happens to him in the burn ward, but its good. Really good. There was an intense satisfaction when I finished it. And, to be truthful, even the darker parts with the graphic, sometimes gruesome detail about his wounds and what he goes through, those are told in such a way, that you really get his voice - his cynicism, and in some parts, I definitely got his self-depreciating humor. And that made it a little easier to read through those parts (but I still winced). STILL...its definitely worth reading. Definitely.
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