Book: My Name is Memory
Author: Ann Brashares
Publisher: Riverhead
Published on: June 1, 2010
Source: Borrowed from library
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It is not enough for me to say whether this book was good or bad.  It's not enough to say that I loved it or that it is now one of my favorites.  Sometimes, a book comes along that shakes you to your very core.
This book had a major effect on me.


After our deaths, we return in new bodies and new lives.  Even though we take a piece of each life with us, we cannot remember our past lives.  Daniel can remember everything from each of his lives.  He first fell in love with Sofia in 510 A.D., and now he spends each of his lives trying to find her and help her to remember the love they once shared.  This is a love story of epic proportions.


At one point, and I won't say which point, I was standing at my kitchen counter listening to the audiobook and was instantly overcome with emotion.  Heat flashed through me, and I could feel my heart pick up speed.  I won't say a book has never had this effect on me, but they are rare.

So before I go into what I like about it or what was brilliant about it, I have to say, this book is heavy.  It felt heavy.  It weighed on my heart and mind while I read it and during every moment that I was not reading it.  But I love epic love stories.  Love them so much.

I "read" this book on audiobook.  As for an audiobook review, I loved it.  I especially loved Daniel's reader.  The book is narrated in both 1st and 3rd person.  Some chapters are told by Daniel.  I loved those chapters.  The reader sounded wise and just right for Daniel.  I can still hear him talk about Sofia.  It's imbedded in my memory. The female reader was good too, but it was Daniel's voice that really stuck with me.
I recommend this audiobook.

I began this book in the car on the way to Walmart.  In the forty minute there-and-back trip, I was gasping and had goosebumps.  A few days later, my husband had plans to pick up his mother four hours away.  I jumped in excitement offering to go instead, just for those uninterrupted four hours alone with this book.

This story consumed me.  No, it was more than the story.  It was the world that Brashares created.  The possibilities and the philosophies.  I absolutely love when a writer creates entire worlds.  I love when they make the impossible seem, not just possible, but real.  I began to think about the idea of reincarnation with the depth that Daniel describes it, and it made me consider how old my soul is and who I could have been in the past.  I didn't just love it, I believed it.  It was all so fascinating.

As for Brashares' writing, it was fantastic.  It had a sincerity to it that I find to be so important in a novel with such a heavy topic.  She writes with conviction.  And she describes everything so perfectly.  I kept finding myself thinking, "I know exactly the feeling she is describing".  At times, it was frank and then subtle at others.

I think this is one of those books that stands strong on it's own, but I really kinda hope the rumor of a sequel is true.  Because that ending...damn.

Okay, I'm done. Read it.

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