Very cool idea for a book, and an excellent execution of that idea. A thoroughly enjoyable read. Recommended. .

Actual rating: 4.5 stars.

read Stuart Archer Cohen's "The Army of the Republic" a few years ago and was tremendously impressed, so when St. Martin's Press offered me a Kindle copy of his latest novel in exchange for a review I was happy to accept.

Looking over my review of the earlier novel, I see I took special notice of how, as the story unfolded, Cohen tied the lives and actions of three quite different characters together. Cohen has a gift for this sort of thing and it's on full display in "This Is How It Really Sounds." Here, the three characters are men with similar names: Harry Harrington, an extreme skier; Pete Harrington, a rock star; and Peter Harrington, a Wall Street bandit. The relationship between the skier and the rock star is clear from the beginning; the connection between the hedge fund millionaire and the rock star becomes clear a few chapters in; later we learn of a tie between the skier and the hedge fund guy; later still ... well, I'll just say the novel's conclusion goes in a direction I did not anticipate, one both profound and sublime, reminding me a bit of David Mitchell, the king of intertwined lives, and his masterpiece "Cloud Atlas."

As with "Cloud Atlas" -- and Cohen's own "The Army of the Republic," the stories of the individual characters and the events that bring them together are damned interesting, tense and suspenseful in many cases, full of convincing detail. The characters, too, not just the three Harringtons but the men and women who play supporting roles, are intensely relatable (even the hedge fund asshole, whom we have every reason to hate yet come to like).

A theme repeats itself throughout the novel: a yearning for a simpler life, close to the land, enfolded within the love of a tight-knit family. A character will glimpse an isolated house: a farmhouse in a Pennsylvania field, a Chinese home of enclosed gardens in a quiet Shanghai neighborhood, a Swiss chalet in a mountain meadow, a mountain cabin in Alaska. The character will long for the life the house seems to promise. The character will feel the urge to approach the house and knock on the door. The character, eventually, will.

I found all this quite moving, and I finished this remarkable book on a high. I should explain that a 4.5 star rating is about as high as I go on the 5 star scale. Call my star ratings idiosyncratic; I reserve 5 stars for the messiah of books. This one comes close.

Note: the e-version I was sent, which I converted to the Kindle file format with NetGalley, was formatted correctly and almost typo-free: the exception was a superfluous three-letter word, "lai," randomly inserted into sentences here and there. I quickly learned to ignore it and it didn't affect my enjoyment of the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I can't believe it took me so long to read it. I kept putting it off in favor of other novels and now I realize what a mistake I made. This is How It Really Sounds is an excellent book that follows several characters who share the same name. Each of them have their own lives and struggles, and by following each one, a broader world is revealed.

The only real connection between each of the characters is the name Peter Harrington. They all exist in their own space and the novel follows each character separately. In some respect, the novel is a collection of stories from three differing lives. It is only toward the end that the narrative seems to come full circle but the wait and final culmination is the most satisfying part of the book.

I would most certainly recommend this novel to others and will look for more by the author, Stuart Archer Cohen, who was new to me (although is known to many others from previous novels).