by Erin Morgenstern
4 out of 5 stars
Really different, really engrossing; I highly recommend. I see that people seem to either love or hate this book. I loved it. I wonder if those who hated it were taking everything too literally. You have to be in the mood to suspend reality just a little -- no more than Harry Potter, though, so give it a go. If you enjoy metaphors and symbolism, all the better, but even if you're reading "lightly," this is still a good book.
The story is difficult to synopsise; it is about magic and how magic affects the human condition. Another reviewer wrote a fairly good summary, so I shall steal it: "As a young girl, Celia Bowen is delivered to the father she never knew, a world famous magician whose secret is that his show is genuine magic - not illusions. He teaches Celia to manipulate the world in the same way so that she can compete in a high-stakes game against Marco, an orphan similarly trained by her father's nemesis. The arena for this game is an elaborate, surreal circus. Neither Celia nor Marco knows the extent of the game, nor their opponent, until they have fallen in love with each other." Can't you just see the atsy film trailer already?!
I started out listening, which was great due to Jim Dale's wonderful narration; however, the plot skips around in time a LOT, and I found it really hard to follow...and, for some reason, I could NOT stop my mind from wandering. Maybe I was just distracted with other things in my life. At any rate, I started over with the book, and it was much easier on my brain.
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