Chosen by Richard and Judy as one of their best selling authors, I thought this was worth a go.
Vida Angstrom has been dying of heart disease since she was born. Her mother cares for her obsessively and her only friend is an elderly Holocaust surviver, Esther, who lives upstairs. Then Vida receives a new heart. The donor has died in a car crash and Vida decides that she is in love with Richard, the bereaved husband.
The story is based on the premise of cellular memory; that is, that each cell of the human body carries some memories of the person in which it lives. In receiving a donated heart, Vida receives some shadow memories of the woman to whom the heart originally belonged. Throughout Vida's recovery from the surgery, a series of stressful events, a road trip, soul searching and a death, Richard works through his grief for his wife, Vida learns about life and her mother learns to let go. It's an interesting story and a great idea for a novel.
However, there are quite a lot of very short chapters in this book. Some are only a page in length. I think this is what made the read feel disjointed for me. It felt a bit like some of those TV programmes where the action is split into bursts of a few seconds at a time and I generally switch off after a minutes as I find I lose track of what's going on! In a book, it's easier because you can go back and reread, but why should you have to?
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