Coincidences Beyond Infinity.
This side of infinity is rife with oddities. Maybe not to you, if you’ve lived here long, but to an infinity immigrant, it’s weird. Beyond weird; infinitely weird.
My wonderful wife is an avid reader. Six plus books per month avid. I’ve been reading more on this side of infinity because I’m sleeping better and can stay up later to read.
For the last several years, I have done most of my book ingestion via audio books. (Hey, fun fact: my first two books are currently being turned into audio books – watch this space for details.) Forty plus minutes of driving per day can get you through Atlas Shrugged in something less than a year – three months, actually. (Editor’s note: If you haven’t read Atlas Shrugged, get off your fanny and do so. It’s phenomenal and insightful and should be required reading for everyone over the age of 16.)
My wife loves historical fiction. Me, I’m more of a sci-fi guy. Over the years we’ve been married, we’ve read some of the same books. “Hey, I think you’d like this one.” Never, until now, have we independently discovered the same book.
At times I cyber-stalk people who read and like my work. That’s how I found Elske Höweler’s novel, Left Behind.
I bought the ebook and started reading. The next morning over coffee, I told my wife that I’d found a book I thought she’d like and told her about the plot.
“That sounds a lot like what I’m reading now.”
Cue the eerie music and goosebumps. We were simultaneously, and without knowledge or coordination, reading the same book. Oddness on this side of infinity.
Höweler’s book is a good one – two thumbs up from the Daily clan, an 8 on the Feral Scale for the story and not rated in terms of science. It’s historical, not science, fiction.
The tale is told in alternating chapters starting in Amsterdam in 1945 with Louise and her infant daughter, Anna, suffering through the Nazi occupation. The next chapter switches to present day, and the perspective of Sarah in London. Höweler does an excellent job of drawing you into the lives, hopes, and fears of the two protagonists.
She colors the 1945 chapters with details add grit to the reality of that place and time: the annoyance of using a dynamo torch, making potato peel soup, and the utter darkness of a house at night, with no electricity or even moonlight.
“But on a night as dark as this one, when even the moon wouldn’t dare go out, everyone stayed in.“
Prisoners in their own homes.
In present day, Sarah, is in a crumbling marriage following the tragic loss of a child. Höweler’s prose comes through strongly.
“The butterflies she used to feel when her husband came home had been replaced by a sadness that reminded her of when warm summer evenings made way for colder autumn nights.“
Good stuff. Strong writing and an engaging tale with a surprising ending. I’m looking forward to more from Höweler in the future. Check it out here.
Spoiler alert.
I wanted to love Sarah. She has great willpower and is determined to find the truth of her history. What I didn’t like was how she treated her husband, Paul. Höweler writes of Paul being strong and supporting Sarah after the loss of their child. Good for him, then Höweler tells us that once Sarah was recovered enough to begin living life again, Paul had run out of strength and needed Sarah’s support. He didn’t get it. Instead, she heads off to Amsterdam to start over. That irked me – not so much that I didn’t enjoy the book, just wanted Sarah to be better.