Whatever you do—don't read the end of this one first. After the first hundred pages
I felt like I had missed something, so I read them again. A spirit comes down out of the sky
and infiltrates an apartment building, kicking off a countdown to a specific day. He/she visits
everyone who lives in the building, wondering if this is the one, the special place, the special
person. After the second time through I couldn’t stand it anymore so I read the last page of
the story. Bad move. I should have waited for it, as it gave a sweet ending to a lot of confusion
and stress.
The story has many, many people in it. There are the people living in the apartment building,
their friends, coworkers, and families, their boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. The book shows us all
the bang and bustle of a city, traffic in the sky, meteorological concerns of WHEN it would come
to Dublin, and in all of these places with all of these people, there was Spirit. Prying into the
recesses of people's minds, he/she was amazed and saddened watching stories unfold and feeling
secrets revealed.
The whole omniscient, omnipresent thing was a little much for my two-track brain. I caught
myself not really following the overall story in spots, but I was always, always, absorbed in the
life of the person in front of me—even the ones I didn't like! That little mishap of reading
the end first didn't make the culminating events any less surprising. It really wasn't what I
expected.
The stories are both hilarious and horrifying at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence.
After the last page, there is an epilogue that offers a perfect example of this phenomenon.
I hope you laugh and are ashamed, as I was, when you find out how an angel performs a random act
of kindness. Since the book's overriding theme was the interaction of the natural and supernatural,
of the Earth and Sky, it made me think of two of the names of Shiva, the Purifier and the Ravisher.
(But the epilogue won't be funny if you read it first!)