This book is a stunner. It's slow but relentless, a quiet crescendo to a beautiful ending that made me cry. I loved it.

The story is told switching back and forth between past and present, and the two lines of the plot are so disparate at first that I really didn't anticipate how they were going to come together. Both were interesting, both began with riveting scenes. They were so completely disunited though. How could it work? Yet when they did meet, it felt inevitable and right.

The strange romance, the contrast in gender roles, the politics -- that's all in there. But what I take away is the portrayal of motherhood -- one mother who sacrifices and struggles and endures such awfulness to keep her baby alive and with her, and one mother who walks away from her child without seeming to ever look back. This contrast and evolution was what drew me in more than any of the rest of it. I was urgent to know what happened in the plot-driven past, where revolution and the elements were genuine threats to the character's lives. But I was also urgent to know what would happen to the characters in the present -- the refugee artist and the sad writer, and the owl they fed together. It was no less compelling.

Joinson is a marvelous writer. I bet her grocery lists are full of wonder. Adding her majestic prose to this complicated landscape and these tightly-folded characters -- was a recipe for brilliance. And this book is a stunner.