What I'm Reading: The Girl You Left Behind

It's not often that I'm so drawn into a novel that I can't put it down. In fact, I don't remember the last time that happened.  Now I'm reading The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes, and I find myself thinking about it constantly. This woman can tell a story, and she can write a sentence and a paragraph and handle dialogue. And by god, she can plot. The Girl You Left Behind is half historical and half contemporary, set in France and England.  That's pretty difficult to pull off, but she does it effortlessly. I read Me Before You first (also a great title) and that was  very good, thought provoking and sad and not-sad all at once, but The Girl You Left Behind is a step beyond. Moyes has more of a backlist, and I'm going to be reading whatever there is to read straight away. I'm not going to review either novel here, not now, because I haven't finished The Girl You Left Behind yet and also because I need to think about it for a while. But I wanted to say this. It's good to come across a storyteller who can handle  both extremes of emotion and the high and low points of experience so deftly. There is sorrow here, of the deepest and most moving kind, and a bone-deep understanding of what it is to lose someone you love.  There is also new love and friendship and animosity and fear. On a couple of occasions things come close to — but don't quite cross –  the line into too much. The historical half of the story is set in France during WWI, which is a little out of the […]