This is a very powerful, original, and unusual novel. By international bestseller # Jean-Paul Debois. A fictional novel worth taking a look at. I enjoyed it so much!
Thank you for the advance copy,
#Netgalley and # Abrams

I was so excited to pick this novel up, but unfortunately I didn't care for the writing style at all.

Such an amazing story! My first to read by this author but I cannot wait to read more! Highly recommend this beautifully written book!

Loved this beautifully written book. The author clearly has an affinity for building a scene. A glorious novel.

Not really sure how I feel about this book. It was meandering and quirky but in a good way. Paul tells his story from his prison cell, from his parents meeting to his adulthood, wife and work and his cellmate. It was very sweet how much he loved his wife and dog and how he managed to befriend Patrick, his tough guy cellmate.

The quirkyness of the story were all the obscure facts about so many things, automobiles, music, guns,etc.

It put me in mind a little of Shawshank Redemption with Paul being angood man who is in a bad situation which he is making the most of. I was hoping Paul was in prison for a different reason but he was still likeable.

I thank NetGalley and Abrams for allowing me to read this interesting book.

"But some days, the dead are like the rest of us, they have trouble living."

5/5

An incredible, enchanting work. I'm a little at a loss as to what to say about this one. It's a beautifully rendered depiction of a lifetime, one full of tragedy, regret, nostalgia. It's the story of a man who has nothing left but time to think back at the tumultuous path of his life, in all of its joy and despair.

The characters are wonderfully done, their pictures painted through the narrator's reminiscence, in such a way that you can feel his reverence for his parents despite their mistakes, his love for his wife and dog, who both exist only in memory, the peculiar warmth he has toward his cellmate, the boiling hatred he has toward his former superior. We are given a vivid, complex portrait of this man and all of his connections, and the lives led by those he's connected to, through just scattered descriptions of moments and lifetimes. The novel beautifully toes the line between the warmth of nostalgia and past love, and the dark heaviness that surrounds those moments due to the circumstances from which they are being told.

Truly a powerful, emotional, deeply compelling story.