A Short Walk Through a Wide World, by Douglas Westerbeke

This book has all the ingredients I love — plucky heroine, historical setting, magic/fantasy elements — yet somehow it didn’t add up for me. It was disappointing, because it’s a great concept and I wanted to love it. The story begins in late-19th century France, where an encounter with a mysterious puzzle ball inexplicably leads to nine-year-old Aubry developing a mysterious disorder where she is in danger of bleeding to death if she stays in the same place for more than a few days. Once she figures out what’s happening, Aubry, first with her family and eventually on her own, begins travelling, and spends the rest of her life wandering the world, constantly moving from place to place to escape her fate. There’s also a mysterious underground library! And yet somehow, all these elements didn’t add up to a story that was compelling for me — things just kept happening, but with no strong sense of plot driving the book forward. Also, the storytelling was sometimes non-linear, with events happening out of chronological order — which I’m generally fine with, but in this case it added to my sense of there not being a plot with real cause-and-effect. Maybe this is just one of those books where there’s a disconnect between book and reader – it’s not a bad book by any means; it just wasn’t for me and didn’t live up to my expectations.