by Simon Van Booy
Few books have left me as emotionally devastated as Van Booy's knockout first novel, Everything Beautiful Began After. While it leans a little towards the side of precious, the book explored what it means to give yourself to someone else and to survive loss with the most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking...
I'm always drawn to books about World War II, and over the last few years that has morphed into looking for more unique books about WWII - and the Illusion of Separateness appealed to me as it is about a group of people who are connected without knowing.I've not read Simon Van Booy before, but the v...
In 2011, Van Booy took my heart, crushed it, reassembled it, and gifted it to me in a wrapping of gorgeous prose in the form of Everything Beautiful Began After. Unsurprisingly, Van Booy has done it again with this book.Van Booy is a short story writer (Everything Beautiful Began After was his first...
I'm always drawn to books about World War II, and over the last few years that has morphed into looking for more unique books about WWII - and the Illusion of Separateness appealed to me as it is about a group of people who are connected without knowing.I've not read Simon Van Booy before, but the v...
It happens from time to time that, as with people, the first impression one has of a book changes when one expends some energy, and looks more closely. I remember a girl who glowed like the sun to my heart when light shone through her hair. But I will spare you those details. I was struck with a sim...
Simon Van Booy likes to write about the interconnectedness of life. Small acts by one person can dramatically impact the life of another, and neither person may even be aware of the connection. But that does not make the connection any less important. Recognizing that we are connected to others, and...
An exquisitely written puzzle-box of a novel - one that, perhaps, relies a bit too much on some classic tropes of "connectedness" and that feels, at times, crafted in its beauty as opposed to organically grown... but I was won over and let the beauty, artificial or natural aside, wash over me. It's...
(from ARC)What a gorgeous little book! The title keeps popping up in myhead - I can't recall the last time I read a novel that was so aptlytitled. It's a meditation on what it means to be human and the small acts that can change the trajectory of a life. The sparse, poetic images are like little ...
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