No spoilers in this review. I’m not saying what the novel is about, except that it features an undertaker’s wife.

Thanks to the Fremont Public Library, I’ve been on an East-asian author binge for the better part of the year. If you read a lot of EA novels or blogs, you notice that we of the Indian subcontinent are wordy. We will describe feelings and events in great metaphorical and allegorical detail. I like that style of prose….it draws one into the characters. (see? Wordy. I could’ve dispensed with this entire para.)

Reading this one was VERY different. Estleman is given to bland, matter-of-fact statements. Big events are described with clinical brevity. Discovery of the love of a lifetime is dealt with in a page and a half. An extra-marital affair and the attending guilt in three paragraphs. And yet he manages to create a sense of the characters, the ethos, the period in which this story unfolds. Very delicately, you’re sucked into the story and its people.

It’s a serious tale about a serious time, so don’t read this for giggles. Do read this for the narration and the construction.

Verdict: Fabulous. I think I have to buy this one.