From the back:

"Anti, a quiet English boy living in Quito, Ecuador, strikes up a friendship with flamboyant classmate Fabián, who is everything Anti isn't: handsome, athletic and popular. What's more, he lives with his rakish Uncle Suarez, while Anti is stuck in the dull ex-pat world inhabited by his parents.

Suarez, a storyteller par excellence, infects the boys with his passion for outlandish tales, and before long their relationship becomes one conducted entirely through the telling of tales. One subject, however, is taboo: Fabián's parents. But when details surrounding their disappearance begin to emerge, Anti decides to console his friend with a story suggesting that Fabián's mother may be living at a bizarre hospital on the coast for patients with memory loss. With confused emotions and reality losing its grip, the boys embark on a quixotic voyage across Ecuador in search of an 'Amnesia Clinic' that may, or may not exist."

***

Snapped this at a sale in the Academic Bookstore in Helsinki.

This is simply an excellent book! At first I wasn't sure, though, and almost abandoned it, but when the boys took off to Pedrascada, it really became a page-turner.

I find myself agreeing with this review: http://fictioncritic.blogspot.com/2008/03/amnesia-clinic.html

The Amnesia Clinic is a coming-of-age-story, a story about the benefits and the downside of imagination, about adolescent friendship, about the difficult relationships between kids and grown-ups, and a lot more besides. I like how the reader can never be sure what is fact and what is fiction. Recommended reading!

***

Next off to ajsmom as part of her Challenge of Gratitude gift. :)

A Challenge of Gratitude gift? I have no idea what this is, but thank you all the same, Annimanni!! I will have to do some research now...I also received some sweet cocktail napkins and a beautiful Christmas ornament. Thank you, thank you - and Merry Merry to you as well. :)

I finished the book on a weekend holiday and found it very surreal. The stories the boys told were imaginative, yet also worrying, given their ages (at least to me!). The cross-country adventure had me scared - as a mom - but also exhilarated for them. I did not expect the ending, though I definitely knew something bad was going to happen...

Thanks again for fulfilling a wish! Wild release notes to follow.

Actually left at Gate N13, but N16 was close enough. :)