<\/p>\n

I actually have a few recently finished books waiting in the wings for their big blog review debut. I’m hoping that now that my schedule is slowly clearing itself, I’ll have a little more time to work on them. <\/p>\n

Hopefully not too much time though. Ahem. <\/p>\n

Now, on to the first review. I read Alan Lightman’s novel Einstein’s Dreams<\/a><\/em> last year and loved it so much that I knew I wanted to read more by this author. I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when I discovered two more of his books at my local library. <\/p>\n

The first of these two books that I read was Lightman’s 2007 offering, Ghost: A Novel.<\/em><\/a> The story follows protagonist David Kurtzweil, a former bank employee who, after being laid off, finds new employment at a funeral home. As one can easily deduce from the title, David has an inexplicable encounter of a possibly paranormal variety while at his new place of employment. <\/p>\n

Actually, one of the things that I loved most about this book was that Lightman doesn’t at first reveal what David saw. He keeps David’s experience a mystery, alluding to it, circumnavigating it, flirting with it…but never quite meeting it face-to-face. It takes a delicate touch to be able to write a novel called Ghost<\/em> without actually discussing…the ghost. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Lightman does finally reveal what David witnessed, and I have to admit, it was a bit of a letdown to me. I think it’s because I was hoping that Lightman would simply not reveal what David saw. I think the further along the story progressed and the longer Lightman remained vague, the more I was convinced that the novel could only possibly work if the reveal never occurred. Perhaps that was my own failing as a reader. I don’t know. <\/p>\n

I do know that Lightman once again enraptured me with his clean, elegant prose. His style is stark and simple, extremely reminiscent of Hemingway in many ways. <\/p>\n

Unlike Einstein’s Dreams<\/em>, this novel is a little less stream-of-consciousness, far more regimented, and a lot longer. Perhaps a bit too long. I found myself growing weary of some of the plot twists toward the end, but, again, this might be a reflection of my response to the reveal that I had hoped would never arrive. <\/p>\n

Final Verdict:<\/strong> I don’t know whether or not I would ever want to re-read this book. While I very much enjoyed the experience on a holistic level, the devil is, indeed, in the details…and the few negatives that I have detailed in this review are enough to convince me not to purchase a copy, but to keep this in mind for a future library revisit. <\/p>\n

I still think that Lightman is very much worth reading. I still treasure the experience of reading Einstein’s Dreams,<\/em> and I promise that the next Lightman book that I review here will be a much more ebullient posting than this one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I actually have a few recently finished books waiting in the wings for their big blog review debut. I’m hoping that now that my schedule is slowly clearing itself, I’ll have a little more time to work on them. Hopefully not too much time though. Ahem. Now, on to the first review. I read Alan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[99,44,450],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10407"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}