Today I would like to recommend you and say a few words about this amazing book by Michelle Richmond, "
The Year of Fog". I'm pretty sure in the end you will want to read it. Trust me.
Maybe some of you remember my post about her other book "
No One You Know". If you missed it, you can find it
here. Also you can fine there more info about Michelle Richmond.
I can tell you one thing "
The Year of Fog", her third book, is the same great book as "
No One You Know", and I think that everyone who read it will agree with me.
↑ cover of "The Year of Fog".
To be honest, I'm glad that at first I read "No One You Know", not "The Year of Fog". Why? Because when I read it I didn't suggest all these great words about this book. I just read, enjoying every words of this amazing and really realistic story.
There
is a girl, her name is Emma, she is walking on the beach. I look away.
Seconds pass. I look back, and she is gone. I keep thinking about the
seconds, the ever-expanding circle. How I set this chain of events in
motion. How I must find some way to make amends...
"
The Year of Fog"
Book is about life, love, trust, believe, searches, anxieties, sense of guilt, hope and...memory. Yes, memory is really important thing in life and in this story, because every detail can change everything.
"The Year of Fog", the story of Abby Mason, her fiance Jake and his six-year-old daughter, Emma. Their wonderful life is changing after Emma's missing in the fog on the beach above Pacific... Everything is going worse and worse with every next day of seeking the missing girl and when everything is pointing at drowning. Abby is the one person who still believes that Emma is still alive, somewhere there, but she lives, and that's why she fights with her memory to find every little detailfrom that bad and sad day, even after almost a year after going missing. Problems are not only because of memories, feelings, sleepless nights and hope, but also because of Emma's biological mother.
Reading this book we can feel the same as Abby, her hopes, fights inside her mind, searching for the truth, sense of guilt and her reflections about relation with Jake, her parents, first boyfriend, Emma... questions [Where she is? Is she really dead? Or maybe she is alive? Maybe somebody kidnap her? What she, Abby Mason, did wrong? What will be with them, with their future?]... and that weird couple who were that day on the car park near the beach.
Yes, couple from the car park. Abby has a bad feeling that maybe they are a solution, maybe they know where Emma is...maybe she is with them. And that's she finally leave everything and going to find them, Emma and return to their old life.
But will it come true? Will she find Emma? And what about she and Jake, will they be still a couple? I won't tell you it, you must read it alone.
I know, I'm a bit cruel, but trust me, it's really worthwhile to read because of all these feelings, anxieties, thoughts. Because of this story.
"The Year of Fog" shows us the story which could happen everyone because it's so realistic and so true. And maybe that's why you read it and read and you just can't stop because you want to know what will happen on the next page. And that's why this book is so amazing - you just want to read it because it's a huge pleasure.
You know, when I read the last word, I was so disappointed that this book is so short. I wanted more. Especially that we don't know the end of the story, to be honest and we only can imagine what happened them, their lives. And that's really cool.
Be honest, as for me (and not only) this is one of the best books of 2007. Book with wonderful story inside.
Quotes from the book:
Some people have a gift for making you feel okay, just by the fact of their presence.
We take pictures because we can't accept that everything passes, we
can't accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We
wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time
that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take
pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the
day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures
out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselve preserved. We fear
that we will die and others will not know we lived.
Tragedy, in its full and life-altering form, happened to other people.
I have a hunch that our obsession with photography arises from an
unspoken pessimism, it is our nature to believe the good things will
not last... But photos provide a false sense of security - like our
flawed memory, they are guaranteed to fade... We take photographs
in order to remember, but it is in the nature of a photograph to forget.
You find a way, somehow to get through the most horrible things, things
you think would kill you. You find a way and you move through the days,
one by one, in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after
the other, and you go along with them - occasionally stunned, and not
entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive.
I hope that my small opinion shows you how good this book is, and who knows maybe you will want to buy or borrow it and read.
To be honest, I can't wait to read another book by Michelle Richmond, because I'm sure it will the same great thing as this and last one. And this one, "The Year of Fog", I just love.
↑ cover of my copy of "The Year of Fog" - "Rok we mgle" [Polish edition].
P.S. Who from you read any book of Michelle Richmond? What do you think about it?
Magdalena Witkiewicz is a Polish writer and graduate of, f.e. the
University of Gdańsk. She wrote and published eight books for adults: Milaczek [2008; second edition 2013], Panny Roztropne [2009; second edition 2013], Opowieść niewiernej [2011], Ballada o ciotce Matyldzie [2013], Szkoła żon [2013], Zamek z piasku [2013], and also for children: Lilka i spółka [2013].
Her book Szkoła żon / School of Wives was published in Vietnam and the title of this book is "TRƯỜNG HỌC CHO CÁC BÀ VỢ" [2014].
You can find more information about writer on her official page or on her official page on FB.
