This line item is tricky, since without having first read a book I don’t know whether it’ll actually make me cry or not. This one came heavily recommended by several people (including one of my tutoring students) as a book that gets very sad at the end. And while I did tear up a bit right at the end, I was not in a full-on snot fest like some of the other books I’ve read (examples of full-on snot fests for me from this year are ‘Red Seas Under Red Skies’ and ‘Endsinger’). I think I might just be a bit desensitized; after reading The Fault in Our Stars, a realism novel has to be really sad to make me reach for the tissues. Though I’m sniffling as I write this, so maybe I’m just babbling.

Anyway, I definitely enjoyed this one, more for its craft of writing than anything else. The book is full of poetic metaphors and lapses into scattered-style line breaks that reminds me of the Japanese calligraphy technique of “Chirashi gaki,” or scattered writing. It lends the whole book a poetic air, as if it’s only vaguely maintaining its prose style. The writing style fits nicely with the main character’s unreliable narration, as she is recovering from a head injury that leaves her with selective amnesia and migraines. I don’t really want to give away much more than that, since a lot of this book’s effect relies on revealing the truth about her ‘accident’ one piece at a time. Definitely worth a read, though!