Birthday present wished for and received. I've read the first few pages and I love the writing so far. Recent winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for first novel, so chances are the "goodness" will continue. I hope!

Shortly after I started reading this novel I learned that it was one of the nominees for the 2nd (annual, I hope) On the Same Page, a project of The Winnipeg Foundation's Literacy for Life Fund. The aim of the project is to promote literacy and Manitoba authors by having all Manitobans reading and talking about the same book.

I missed being counted in last year's tally of readers of that year's book, In Search of April Raintree, simply because I'd read the book years ago and am seldom inclined to re-read and thus chose not to.

But this year I had a chance to be counted if I could wait until October to read the book. So I put it aside and, although it beckoned often from the shelf, I didn't pick it up again until the end of October. As soon as I finished reading I logged onto the website www.onthesamepage.ca to count myself among the readers. I was number 58. I was disappointed that there was nowhere on the site to actually talk about the book. Bummer. I guess we're supposed to "talk amongst ourselves", but so far I haven't come across anyone else who's read it.

I really enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It was just lovely to read. It follows Lily Piper who, when the book opens, is a young girl living the hard life on the farm with her very religious family on the Canadian Prairies. In her teens, her father sends her on her own to England (just as he had come to Canada as a boy on his own leaving his family behind). Ostensibly it is to care for her ailing grandmother but it is just as much to save her from her mother, to whose expectations Lily just can't seem to live up. In England she meets her adopted cousin with whom she falls in love and through whom she learns about the great wide world.

In essence this is a coming of age novel but it is a very rich one with themes of religion and evolution, war and politics, love and family. The relationships between Lily and her family members, especially with her mother and her father, I found very interesting.

And, I loved how Lily imagines gaps in history. When she does not know exactly what happened and no one can tell her, she makes up her own truth - much as the eye does between flashes of lightning.

A wonderfully well written book, I'm glad to have read. Highly recommended.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I'm betting that someone at our monthly meeting will want to be "on the same page". If not, I'll leave it on the shelf in the loft to await its next reader.

To the finder of this book:

Welcome to the wonderful and wacky world of BookCrossing! Here you'll find a unique and worldwide community of book lovers sharing their books. This book is now yours! Read it, enjoy it. Keep it or pass it on to someone you know or even release it back into the wild as I did. If you make a journal entry (either anonymously or as a BookCrossing member) all previous readers of this book will be notified by e-mail and can follow this book on its travels. BookCrossing is free to join, completely confidential (you are known only by your screen name and no one is ever given your email address) and whole lot of fun!

I hope you enjoy this book and the BookCrossing experience.

I picked this up at our monthly meeting of bookcrossers from Pooker3. I love reading local authors so I'm excited to read this before the next Canada Day Release Challenge (5 more months!) Thanks Pooker3!

I'm not entirely sure where my travels will be today so I can't give any clues to where I will leave this!

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This is a release for the 2012 Canada Day Release Challenge.

Congratulations on finding this Canadian book, released in honour of Canada Day. I hope you enjoy it!