Ignatius Reilly is certainly an interesting character. He seems to be a misfit everywhere – even in his own life. He has strong views on many things, one would even call them unique – only because no one else seems to share them. His self righteousness and self centeredness are beyond any character I’ve ever met in novels or real life. The novel takes place in New Orleans in late fifties and is a wonderful look at the influences on the cultures that co-existed, Negroes, French, Homosexuals, Politics, Pirate Lore, Private Enterprise, Street Vending and Communis’.

My favourite part was when Ignatius came up with the plan to create world peace by filling the government and military with homosexuals as they would have no interest in fighting or war.  I laughed out loud when I read that.

Lots of memorable characters, Trixie, Dorian Greene, Santa Battaglia and Mrs. Reilly – round out the colourful cast and make this novel well worth the read.

The author committed suicide at the young age of 32, in the novel Ignatius is 30. I do wonder how much of Toole is in Reilly and vice versa and if Reilly’s suppressed sexuality and genius were part of Toole and part of what drove him to take his own life.

This was an incredible book.

I normally avoid books about the Holocaust and WWII because I have nightmares about the time period. And true to form, I did about this one as well, however I could not stop reading it. I had to know what became of Liesl and Rudy and the people of Himmel Street.

The omnipresent narrator of the novel is "Death". Once I accepted that concept and got on with the business of reading the novel, it sucked me and didn't let go until the last page.

Death and Liesl first meet when he comes for her 6 year old brother on a train. In Nazi years, Death and Liesl's paths cross many times even though he doesn't come for her. He is the one that tells us how she becomes "The Book Thief", how she learns to read painstakingly and slowly, how she falls in love with her foster parents, her friends on Himmel Street and a hiding Jew named Max. Death shows us her weaknesses and her strengths and her faults and her dreams.

Although the novel is mostly about Liesl and her love affair with books and words and how they sustain her through the awful times of Nazi Germany, it is also about Death and how he takes comfort in observing Liesl while doing a job that no one thanks him for.

I may have made this sound hokey and otherworldly, but it is not in the least. It is a serious story of a young girl living in a time of fear and little happiness. What does make her happy, is her books, her friends and her beloved Papa. She learns at an early age that nothing lasts forever, except the words, and even those can be taken away at any moment.

There are some amazing quotes throughout the book and the short fables that Max, the on the run Jew, writes to Liesl are both heartbreaking and heartwarming. I would quote them here but I already passed the book along to chronicbooker3. I am sure it will move her as much as it did me.

From Our Editors

Someone is luring lonely young girls into suicide pacts.  The girls are misfits in their schools, their parents don’t understand them and they see suicide with a partner as a romantic and easy end to their troubles. 

The suicide trysts are romantic; complete with burning candles, exchange of rings and poetry.  They are also tragic; only the young girls lay dead.

DI Mark Tartaglia is working on the case, in charge for his out of commission Chief.  When the media gets hold of the case and dubs the killer “The Bridegroom”, the case is taken away from him and given to a new DCI, Carolyn Steele.  Steele and Tartaglia do not see eye to eye on many things, including the use of psychological profilers and following hunches.  When Steele brings a profiler, Tartaglia is even more determined to follow his own leads on his own time with his own team of men. He is a bit of a rogue, and will do what it takes to get the job done.  Even when he senses that Steele herself may be in danger, he continues down his own path.

Throw in his dark Italian good looks, convoluted love life, clinging sister and his love of fine wines and motorbikes,  and his is an interesting and arresting character that is bound to become a semi-heartthrob in future novels when this series takes off.

With his partner, they track down leads – never knowing the killer is closer to them than they are to him.

The story is interspersed with chapters narrated by the killer which make for a suspenseful read and keeps the reader guessing. Clearly the killer is someone who is watching the case and the players very closely; he wants to rattle them, to taunt them and even to kill them. He even goes so far as to stalk DCI Steele at her home and send her threatening emails.

This is a well written police procedural that doesn’t glamourize nor undervalue the strength of police team work. The author’s view seems to be that good police work is 90% hard work and 10% inspiration.  I tend to agree with her.  Good cops have good intuition and inspiration as a result of years of hard work, they aren’t born with it.

 As this tumultuous and suspenseful novel comes to an end, some would say the finale is unsatisfying and frustrating as it doesn’t wrap up neatly as most novels of this genre do; but no other ending would have fit the characters involved.

Elena Forbes and Mark Tartaglia are definitely a team to watch out for.

Wow, what can I say about this book...well first let me paste what the synopsis is from Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
At once audacious, dazzling, pretentious and infuriating, Mitchell's third novel weaves history, science, suspense, humor and pathos through six separate but loosely related narratives. Like Mitchell's previous works, Ghostwritten and number9dream (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize), this latest foray relies on a kaleidoscopic plot structure that showcases the author's stylistic virtuosity. Each of the narratives is set in a different time and place, each is written in a different prose style, each is broken off mid-action and brought to conclusion in the second half of the book. Among the volume's most engaging story lines is a witty 1930s-era chronicle, via letters, of a young musician's effort to become an amanuensis for a renowned, blind composer and a hilarious account of a modern-day vanity publisher who is institutionalized by a stroke and plans a madcap escape in order to return to his literary empire (such as it is). Mitchell's ability to throw his voice may remind some readers of David Foster Wallace, though the intermittent hollowness of his ventriloquism frustrates. Still, readers who enjoy the "novel as puzzle" will find much to savor in this original and occasionally very entertaining work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.


After I read the novel, I went and read some reviews on bookcrossing and amazon and also, chapters. There seems to be a consistency, people either love or hate this novel, either loves it for it's cleverness and inventiveness or hate it for the same reason.

For me, it didn't all come together until the second Luisa Rey story. Before that it seemed a series of disjointed stories that had a similar thread but were not really related. Even though I knew that each story would end abruptly, each time it happened I was shocked and confused and even turned back pages to be sure I hadn't missed something or they weren't stuck together. Mitchell's talent is in his ability to have so many different voices in the story and for all of them to be equally strong and likeable. The theme of "six" and "reincarnation of souls" and of "consumerism" is rampant through all the novellas and this novel could almost be seen as a foretelling of our future. And as Javid wondered (paraphrased), if we know what the future is, could we change it?

Our future is heading very much the way of Somni's time, where consumerism is driving our world and our success is dependent on what we earn and spend and own rather than who we are. Let us take Mitchell's novel as a warning and not a foretelling.

This was a light, easy reading, yet suspenseful thriller and I had no idea "whodunnit" til almost the very end. The covering up the killer bit was very well done and clever, although the characters are bit cheesy and stock. These are recurring characters from other novels and this is the first in a series, so it will be interesting to see how it develops.

There are lots of people who want Constance Young - a talented, beautiful, successful TV personality - dead. There's the spurned boyfriend, the mistreated assistant, her ex boss who resents that she left his network for another, the dowdy sister and all the other people that Constance stepped on, on her way to the top.

When she's found drowned in her pool, no one is really surprised to find out she was murdered - but when other people connected to the case turn up dead, Eliza Blake is determined to find out who is involved and why, even it means her own life is at risk.