Five star review, originally posted here on September 16, 2019.
I’m trying to be honest with myself and decide how much my love for this book is impacted by the fact that the book I read immediately before it was a disappointing pile of trash and this book seemed like perfection by comparison. I honestly don’t know. But the truth is that this book is everything that my last read was not. Beautiful characters. Beautiful writing. Beautiful setting. Beautiful story. And beautiful brevity. My last read was a long and bloated mess, full of cardboard people (especially cardboard women). But in less than half the pages, Greene pulls us deeper into the world of her strong, complex characters than my last author did with his hundreds of pages of repetitive drivel.
Anyhoo, even without the context in which I happened to have read this book, it is still a lovely bit of prose, guaranteed to suck you into Greene’s expertly-crafted world. I very much look forward to getting to know more of her work, and suggest you do the same.
Helga without the H 