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The Brightest Star in the Sky
A Novel

by Marian Keyes

     

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!)

The Book

Viking Adult / an imprint of Penguin
January 21, 2010
Hardcover
0670021407 / 978-0670021406
Fiction / Paranormal / Chicklit
More at Amazon.com
Excerpt
NOTE: Sex, Violence

The Reviewer

Beth E. McKenzie
Reviewed 2010
NOTE:
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