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The World (2012)

by Bill Gaston(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0670065838 (ISBN13: 9780670065837)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Hamish Hamilton

review 1: Another of the books for the pre-writers' festival class. A very thought provoking book within a book within a book. The narrative is divided into thirds. Each section of the book is from the perspective of one of the three main characters with time moving forward throughout. Although each of the main characters has an extreme situation (loss of home, terminal cancer, Alzheimer's), the story does not seem improbable nor unrealistic.
review 2: I have rarely if ever read a book within a book within a book...let me explain!! Hal who is suffering from Alzheimer's was a Buddhist monk in Tibet (Canadian)and while there wrote a book called The World. Fast forward to present day, his daughter Melody who is dying of cancer reunites with a high school friend Stuart. ... moreWhile Stuart and Melody visit her father, they decide to read the book back to him as a way to pass the time. The World is about a researcher and his translator trying to make sense of a tin box of papers found on an old leper colony in B.C. Those papers are another story written by a Chinese female leper who was banished to this island in B.C. This is what I mean by a story within a story within a story...quite an amazing feat by an author!! I loved the characters since they were all battling with their own tragedy. The beginning of the book opens with Stuart setting his house on fire without his even knowing. This starts the book off on a very humorous bend and continues as he drives from B.C. to Toronto. Once he reunites with his long lost friend Melody the book takes on a more fatalistic bend since Melody is dying from cancer. This book is wonderfully written and brings forth the history of the leper colony in B.C. Having visited the leper colony in Kalaupapa on the island of Molokai, I was fascinated by this piece of Canadian history. less

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