Room on the Mountain, A by Anne CimonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed this beautifully written, deeply felt exploration of a woman coping with the loss of her husband and her own mortality. The narration pulls you in, laying bare all the little details that we use to distract ourselves from pain and grief. Anne Cimon is an impressive writer with a gift for revealing characters caught in vulnerable, awkward moments in ordinary settings: hospital corridors and waiting rooms, restaurants and public washrooms, empty apartments inhabited by missing loved ones. It's a sensitive page-turner, driven by a sense of relentless searching for answers: how to live in the aftermath of illness, how to face loneliness and fear of death, how to rebuild a broken life and find reasons to go on? Her heroine, Catherine Sauve, is a compelling mixture of practicality and eccentricity, as she fantasizes about the surgeon who saved her life. Cimon achieves the delicate balance between hope, kindness, synchronicity and the near-magical romantic feelings that they stir up. Although I felt it ended too quickly, I found this novel very touching and cinematic in its close-ups and also in the way it sustained dramatic tension to the end. Highly recommended!
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