Teenage Ophelia, known as O, is ambivalent about being sent to help her aunt while her father is traveling and researching for a book. O's aunt Emily is a poet, a recluse, and a bit eccentric. She owns The Green Man, a ramshackle used bookstore. O arrives to find her aunt in poor health and haunted, perhaps literally, by events from her past. As O attempts to clean up the bookstore and apartment, and to watch over her aunt's faltering health and haphazard diet, she discovers dark secrets that may pose a danger to both her aunt and herself.
This is certainly a quiet book -- it moves at a glacial pace, and though there are exciting events at the end, they are wrapped, as it were, in trailing streamers of poetry and symbolism. While I enjoyed this well enough, it's neither the sort of book that I can see myself rereading, nor the sort that will spring to my mind when I'm looking for fantasy to recommend. I know that there are quiet, poetic readers out there who will cherish this book, but they are a small and unassuming minority, I am afraid.
(Reviewed from a copy sent to me by the publisher, via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
Um...I have wanted to read this one ever since I heard of it, and still do--i am a sucker for old bookstores!
ReplyDeleteHey, "every book its reader" -- perhaps you are the perfect reader for this particular book. :-)
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