It is a hardback edition with 176 pages, but nevertheless it is light , with about 250 gramm.

Product Description
Edinburgh, 1874: Little Jack is born with a frozen heart and immediately undergoes a life-saving operation — the implantation of a cuckoo-clock in his chest. From then on his days all begin with a wind-up, in this dark, tender fairy tale spiced with devilish humour.

Update: 2010.09.07.
I fell in love with its cover, when I saw it, I knew that I wanted to read it. some months later I run into it in a bookshop, I grabbed it immediately... :)

It is a strange story, and very difficult to describe it. It can be called a fairytale, but not for children's, I think, since it is a love story. ....... It has fantasy elements, Jack with his cuckoo-clock heart needs every day a wind-up, with his tick-tock sound, he is an outsider amongst people, moreover there is a "door" where he must not enter, he is warned by Dr Madeline, "love is dangerous for your tiny heart", nevertheless he fell in love... madly. ........ It has romance elements, as how his love is described towards Miss Acacia, emotions, intensive, destructive emotions, love, anger, rage, jealousy, pain as well. ........ It has allegory elements considering Jack's cuckoo-clock heart, what it symbolizes for Jack, and surprisingly for Madeline too.

Interesting read.
But. Somehow, I still think the cover is better than the story itself.

~~ I offer this book for a BookRay ~~
Read and passed on: 1. azuki (USA), 2. allthesepieces (USA), 3. blueblack (UK), 4. Nell-Lu (UK), 5. waderwoman (UK), 6. LilyKlip (GER), 7. hon-no-tomo (IRE), 8. silvia-pco (POR), 9. sarabe1 (SWE)

Skipped: Lydiasbooks (UK) - inactive user

Next Readers
10. bellivas (GRE) - int'l <--- travelling here
11. fee_gee (UK) - prefer UK postage
12. Ashleigh4985 (UK) - UK/EU mail
** Thank You!! :) ** ---<<--{@

The book has been lost under posting :(((

The ray starts, and the book is travelling to its first reader!

Update: November 10.
I forgot to stick its BCID in :(, so azuki couldn't JE-ed.

It's here! Sorry for the delay in journaling but I couldn't find the BCID.
The copy is so beautiful, I love this book already!! : D Can't wait to dig in though I have another ring ahead of this, so wait I must...

I do agree that I like the cover more than the book itself. Don't be mistaken, I do like the story, it's beautiful, with a very poetic prose. Like "The sky has just fallen into the bathtub. Miraculously, an ordinary tap pours tender stars into the silence of the night." However, the story is so bizarre I have a hard time anchoring myself into it and its characters, although towards the end, I do love this beautiful, sad fantasy.

I will pack and mail out this book next week. Thanks Hakkalina for the beautiful labels, I'll leave some for future readers.

I always love receiving books in the mail, and I have to say this is a beautiful book. I hope that bodes well for the story. I may have to look for more of Benjamin Lacombe's artwork.

I do have a few bookrings in front of this one, but I'll try to finish with it as quickly as possible. Thanks for sharing!

(Just a note, but I had some trouble with the BCID, too. I had to enter it a few times before the site would accept it. Odd, huh?)

Just checking in. I should have this finished by the end of the week, but meanwhile, I'll get shipping information from the next participant. :)

This was an unusual book, but I'm afraid I have to agree that I enjoyed the cover art much more than the story itself. There was a lot that bothered me. The first thing I noticed was that the story was written in the present tense and that continued to distract me throughout the book. Flowery writing made it seem like the author was heavily dependent upon description to compensate for weak writing. Most of the story just didn't fit together. And on top of everything, there were some really uncomfortable scenes that made it obvious, at least to me, the book was written by a man. (I really don't care to know the author's gender or sexual preference while reading a book, unless it's an important element in the story.)

Though the negative outweighs the positive, I did enjoy some of the analogies I noticed, including the choice to open with such a mechanical tone. I was especially fond of the way the prostitute's midwife was introduced:

"She still had a glint in her eye, but her smile is just a twitch, betraying a loose connection in her facial wiring."

I'm definitely willing to give the story the benefit of the doubt by blaming the French-to-English translation. (Or was it originally written in English?)

Anyway, thank you for the chance to read this. If nothing else, I have a new artist to look for, and for that I'm very happy.

I'll take a hike through the snow and have this on its way to the next participant tomorrow. (The post office is closed today.) Happy reading!

This has arrived safely, thank you!

I really enjoyed the opening of this book. It perfectly complemented the front cover with its quirky, gothic fairy-tale prose. The image of clockwork gears being grafted into the chest of a frozen baby really captured my imagination, but unfortunately the story failed to live up to its early promise. Perhaps it's my repressed Britishness, but the scene where our hero and heroine meet for the first time as children and spontaneously burst into a song about sexual love didn't sit right with me. By the end of the book Jack's actions irked me more than anything and I didn't feel sympathy for his situation. I was surprised by the ending as I expected a different outcome. I'm glad that books like this, that straddle the line between child, adult, fantasy and fairytale, are available, but I get the feeling that the author's fame allowed this to get published, whereas an unknown writer wouldn't have received such a rapturous reception from critics.

Posted to Nell-Lu

This arrived a few moments ago. Many thanks blueblack for sending it my way and hakkalina for starting the ray. I've been looking forward to reading this (especially as it's set in my home town of Edinburgh). I'll start as soon as I finish my current book -- probably at the weekend.

I have to agree with the other JEs here -- the idea of this book, and its physical presentation, were much better than the book itself. The first sequences were probably the most successful, but I was too busy saying things like "river? What river?!" to be able to appreciate them. The "Edinburgh" of the book is entirely fictional and bears only a superficial resemblance to Edinburgh the real city.

Nonetheless, I have wanted to read this since I first heard about it, so many thanks hakkalina for making that possible. I have waderwoman's address so will pop this into the post later today.

Happy reading, waderwoman!

Yippee! This arrived this very morning! I can't wait to get started on it!
thanks x

This really has to be the strangest book Ive ever read! I loved the cover as well as the idea of the story but sadly it didnt live up to its early promise.
Im glad I read it though, but shant bother looking for any others by this author!
thanks for sharing Hakkalina!
I shall package it up now and pop it off to LilyKlip.

If you are reading this then I have arrived safely!
Please do a journal entry-Thanks xx

This is being popped in the post to Lilyklip>
Safe journey little book!

The book has now arrived in Germany. Thank you for sharing it, hakkalina and thank you for posting it, waderwoman. The chocolate was much appreciated and didn't survive the first ten minutes in my possession ;)

I give up on the book. It's not even the story I don't like, that's actually kind of sweet. But the writing style...Ouch! The "voice" of the book is a little boy, at the beginning a newborn and I'm sorry but, ignoring the fact that a newborn can't really express himself in words at all, this particular newborn and later a boy growing up knows way too many things about the world he hasn't seen yet. Not even big things, but stuff like: "She's like one of those old ladies who takes quarter of an hour to choose a tomato at the market." - this is something he says about Dr Madeleine minutes after his birth... Or when he first meets the little dancer he compares her to a Flamenco dancer - yeah, I'm sure loads of them have been hopping around Dr Madeleines cabin which the boy has hardly ever left at that point.

It just feels like the author wanted to be too clever and didn't consider that all those clever, colourful comparisons don't really suit a kid narrator.

So anyway, thank you for sending it round. I will post to the next person as soon as I have the address.

The book is traveling again.

The book has arrived safely.

It's an interesting story, but I feel that the author tried too hard to bring a point across by using the cuckoo-clock heart allegory.
The idea is fascinating and a rather original one, I'd think.
I found it hard to actually emphatise with the characters.

I'll send it on its way to silvia-pco.

And here it is! Mount TBR is exactly on the small side, but I'll try to be quick!

First of all, I'm sorry it took me such a long time to read this.

As many previous readers, I have mixed feelings about this book. It starts off nicely, with that dark, Gothic novel feel to it... and the story is very beautiful, but also very weird at some points. The premise of the cuckoo-clock heart, however, is really original, and I loved it. But it did went way to overboard sometimes.

Still, it is a lovely book, very interesting, with a nice and poetic writing that I liked a lot. Although some readers were surprised by the ending, I must say it met my expectations, and I think it was he most suitable pick for a book like this.

Thank you so much for sharing. The book's already on its way to sarabe1. Enjoy :)

Sorry, things have been crazy around here - haven't had time to log in to BookCrossing.

Anyways - this book reached me and I totally loved the cover and the first couple of chapters. They were exciting, dreamy and awakened my fascination for a genre I usually don't read.

Unfortunately, the reminder of the book didn't manage to live up to my intial thrill.

Anyway, I am glad I tried a book from a new genre, even if I probably won't read very many more...