Diane Barnes's Reviews > No Two Persons

Well. This was a very solid 4 stars all along, until I got to the end. The last story, "The Agent" sent it soaring up to 5 and the epilogue only reinforced that feeling. It left me in the classic "I love this book so much" pose, with the book in my lap and me staring at the wall for a few minutes.

This is a book about the readers of a book titled "Theo". The first chapter is about the author writing the book, and succeeding chapters are short stories about the people who read the book (or dont) and how it affects them. Put like that, it doesn't sound too interesting, but that's just part of the whole, because it's really about connections, in a Six Degrees of Separation kind of way. How books give us what we need when we need it sometimes, how one book can lead to another, can help us understand the world, deal with grief or confusion, make us better people. Yes, that's a lot for one book to do, but we all read different versions of a book because of who we are or where we are in our lives.

"Picking up a book was a decision: I'm going to go away. The exciting possibility: I may not come back the same." Exactly.

This book made me think of one of my favorite books, Howard's End, and Forster's insistence to "only connect". That's why we read, to connect with authors and characters and words on a page. It made me think of Kent Haruf and Wendell Berry, not because of similarities in style or substance, but because we feel so connected to their world when we read them. Bauermeister gets that, and her way of connecting these stories and characters to each other in unknown ways is nothing short of brilliant.

Heartily recommended to book lovers everywhere.