I loved reading this book. It had an unusual theme, but it worked well. Lots of characters to empathise with, and hope for a happy ending for them - you'll have to read it to find out!

Picked this up from Wagtail, at the Aberdeen Official BookCrossing Zone in the Belmont Cinema Bar yesterday at a mini meet that the wonderful Ythan was brilliant enough to set up! How thrilled I am to be given this, being really keen to read it after a number of folk have recommended it to me. Also there are a number of bookcrossers who have written about its brilliance in various recommendation discussion threads.

Wow, this was so good, what wonderful writing no wonder other bookcrossers were raving about it! It was quite a sublime piece of writing, moods and moments picked out deliberately creating a time out of mind for the people of all sides of the divide forced into being by a frightful hostage situation. Tension was racked up almost beyond bearing so reading this was not comfortable. But delicately the false calm created by the writing style gave enough distance to ease one on almost drowsily through the pages of this dangerous territory. The mistaken need for desperate action to be an answer when all other routes to reason had failed was ultimately revealed in all its dreadful consequence. I thought this quite breath taking.

RELEASE NOTES:

I have released this at the March Monthly Meeting for the Edinburgh Bookcrossers and it was snapped up, of course!

Heard so much about this book so yes, I snapped it up quickly :o)Thanks !!

A truly wonderful book ! The author had me completely hooked on the characters and same as the story, after a while you don't think in terms of ''terrorists'' and ''hostages'' anymore and begin to see the people behind their titles of Priest,General,Translator, Businessman, Opera Singer etc. I loved the way how music became the offical language if you will in the character's absurd situation and how the most illfitted (for lack of a better word) people fall in love. Utterly beautifully written and this will certainly be one of my favourite books this year.

RELEASE NOTES:

May Meet Up

This book took me ages to get around to reading. It was not particularly to my tastes - ultimately maybe somehow a bit too slow moving a style for me. I feel like I should have found it more interesting than I did! Somehow it felt like it was trying a bit too hard to say something significant or meaningful rather than being totally driven by the storyline, so a little too worthy, however I think it did provide and interesting and different way of looking at some aspects of life, politics and personality and I'm sure many people would love it (well obviously they do from reading others' comments on here) and also wonder what on earth I am talking about since my comments may seem totally wrong! Maybe I need to know more about opera and music to appreciate it... anyway, hope to get to a meeting soon to release again or send it wild.