What I'm Reading #23

"The Magician's Assistant" is my 3rd book by Ann Patchett, although it was written prior to either of the other two I've read. It is still beautifully full of all the things that I love about her writting. The way she takes people from disparately different backgrounds and unites them by a common event to reveal the depth of their humanity in all of it's complexities. We are left never knowing what to expect next, because the journey through the story belongs equally to everyone. We may know, or think we know, the principle characters the best, but even a minor player can suddenly transform a moment, be the catalyst to an epiphany.

Her stories reveal themselves like layers on an onion carefully peeled back. In both instances the effect on my tear ducts are very nearly the same. I can't help but become so entwined with the people in the novel that I shed tears all along the way. I don't cry, that's a really different act, but a shed tears in joy and sorrow at what is discovered and at what is lost. I love her writing.