Spotted in a Healthy World shop and could not resist picking it up.

Ann Holmes is an unlikely choice as a visionary. She is sixteen, an itinerant runaway, the daughter of an unmarried teenage mother who lives with a meth-amphetamine addict who at fourteen repeatedly raped Ann resulting in two abortions. Ann is a severe asthmatic, small, skinny, has jagged cut hair and constantly wears a hooded sweatshirt to shroud her features. Carolyn Greer a fellow mushroom picker who lives in a van in the North Fork camp-ground is the only person she has that even approaches being a friend.

However, the real strength of this book is the characterisation of the four main characters, Ann, Carolyn, Father Collins and a former logger called Tom Cross. All are deeply flawed. Ann has been subjected to an abusive where she was raped and has taken a cocktail of drugs, including magic mushrooms or psilocybin, to cope with the trauma. Carolyn is a non-believer who is mouthy and exploitive whereas Father Collins is fairly newly qualified as a priest and is struggling with his own calling and sexual desires in a mildewing parish. Tom Cross is an ex-logger who now works as a prison officer whose bullying of his wimpish son led to the latter having an accident which left him a quadriplegic. Tom curses God but feels guilt for his son's accident and is desperate for a measure of redemption becoming in the process an unlikely believer.

However, Guterson successfully manages to skirt the question of truth or fraud but instead focuses on the persistence and perhaps even need of faith in modern times, the limits of human reason measured against spiritual yearning.

I have a few minor quibbles with this book, the use of the word "nigger" in one section and the lack of quotation marks for dialogue, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The story is told with passion and readers whatever their beliefs will be able to relate to the feelings that it inspires even to those, who like myself, aren't particularly religious at all.

Spotted this on a wishlist so going to hopefully make a new friend. Enjoy!

Received. Thank you. Another book crossed off my wishlist - looking forward to reading it.

I honestly am not sure what to make of this book. On one hand, the lack of speech punctuation and the changing viewpoints annoyed me intensely, but on the other, I was completely taken in by the intrigue surrounding Ann and her visions. Although not particularly religious myself, I am fascinated by the magic and mystery that surrounds the 'older' faiths. Whether Ann is truly seeing the Virgin Mary, or she's hallucinating from drug addiction and bad flu, the author cleverly never answers. Because. although she is the main character, it is other people's reactions to her that make this story. There are people trying to be her true friend and look out for her, people who want to take advantage of the opportunity, people who want to believe and can't, and some that start of believing and become skeptical. Personally, I like to believe she was truly seeing something.

As an aside, the church that is finally built sounds amazingly beautiful - I think I'd be more likely to attend more often if nature was as part of it as here.

Merry Christmas

Hope you enjoy your goodies

What a beautiful surprise! Thank you so very much, dark-draco, for the utterly unexpected parcel that reached me after a long (and very guilt-inducing) bookcrossing hiatus.
This story of mysticism, communing with nature and finding one's path sounds like it's just in my wheelhouse. I very much appreciate you thinking of me. <3