Started it last night, will definitely have it finished before I go to work this afternoon.

Examples of the beauty of Donovan's description:
"Now I was more than happy, nothing that I had a word for, to have all this company in my life all of a sudden. She felt to me like those first drops of rain that make you wait in the doorstep with your coat above your head, wondering if this is a small cloud or something longer."

or this:
"The absence of someone comes like a new season, first only in pieces: you see the absence in them long before they leave. In Claire it started with long glances and silence and arrived fully only after she was gone."

I think Julius supplies his own best description of himself: "What I wanted to say to that man as he walked ahead of me in the woods was that I didn't have feeling where I should and too much where I shouldn't. You keep away from men like me, and you'll be alright in life."

Wow. I finished Donovan's novel this morning and found myself staring off into space for minutes after, trying to process it. It's going to be one that will haunt me for awhile, I think. It's unsettling to find myself pulling for someone who is clearly so disturbed, yet as the narrator, Julius won me over. If he were angrier, more emotional, more erratic, he would have lost me, but there is something about his calm, his reasoned reaction to grief, his precision, his beautiful descriptions that draw me in.

I couldn't resist the raves of my readerly friends. This one is on it's way.

Last night I read the deeply disturbing, remarkably beautiful Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan. I think this one was recommended in Readerville Journal by first Joseph O'Connor, then PatD and someone else. Really quite something different but maybe too appealing for its content or maybe that's the point. Anyway, do read it for I'd love to know what y'all think of it.