The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern

So I feel tricked by this book. It was a gift from a good friend of mine.

“Here” she said. “I think you’ll like this book.” she said.

I began to read. It was beautiful. It was like meeting an incredibly attractive stranger at a fancy party you snuck into. Here is a whiff of their perfume/cologne. There you hear them laugh softly somewhere in a crowd of people. You can feel a brush of their fabric against your skin as again you just miss them. Their name, you must have their name!

Instead you find a scrap of paper. On it, there are three numbers. Could it possibly be a phone number? Or maybe a time. You know it’s important, but right now you don’t know just how.

You keep following the story, desperately drinking the magnificent word choices and the startlingly consistent tenses of the passages. Deeper it draws you in. You feel cradled.

The exploration of character was not a forward theme of this novel and yet by the end you feel as though you know each intimately. Like you share something private with them. Each piece of the split plot falls into place and the feeling of pride when you stand back and look at the whole thing is true. This is one of the most beautiful journeys that I have been on in a long time and my hat is off to the author for bringing this art into a readable format.