The Hypnotists Love Story: Book Review

I loved What Alice Forgot, but started and didn't finish Big Little Lies, which is rare for me. I have to really dislike a book to put it down, but I couldn't relate to any of the characters in Big Little Lies.

But I did like Ellen, her friends, her mom. I (and I hate to admit this, could even feel a kinship with Saskia) For most of the book, I was unsure about Patrick, but I think this may have been the author's intention.

I read the book with the same sort of attention you give to an impending train crash. I was worried I knew the ending...I'm glad I was wrong. But because I feel somewhat manipulated--like the author intentionally made me fear for an unpleasant outcome, I can't give the book five stars. Also, I have to say I disagree with the USA Today blurb on the front jacket. It is not a breezy summer read that will make you feel warm all over.

But I loved the prose. So many brilliant lines! Here's a few of my favorites.

She was all softness and soap, no makeup or jewelry. Her skin had a polished translucent look, as if she only ever bathed in mountain streams. She smelled like one of those overpriced crafty shops you find in country towns: sandalwood and lavender.

As I walked in, the light seemed to whoosh through my head, like a breeze, and I could smell old books and the sea.

Their nervous first-date voices seemed too loud, and three bored teenage waitresses stood about the room with nothing better to do than eavesdrop on their stilted conversations.

The reason she'd been deliriously happy today had not been because of the weather or the porridge or the new heating or the news. It was because of him.

Sometimes she felt like she was always dragging the memories of these relationships along with her, like three old tin cans on a string.

Saskia. An unusual name with its hard, spiky little syllables.

Patrick appeared to highly approve of every new thing he learned about her body, her past, her personality. It made Ellen not just sexier, but funnier, smarter, nicer, kinder, all round lovelier.

It didn't feel like she was just recalling memories. It seemed perfectly reasonable that they were still there, somewhere, on some other plane of existence, and if she just sat here quietly for long enough and really concentrated, she could slip through time or matter or something and rest her head on her grandfather's shoulder just one more time and see him redden slightly the way he always did whenever she hugged him.

And then the whole Sunday lay ahead of me like a malicious joke.

But the words were as irresistible as the last chocolate in the box.

They're adorable and athletic, friendly and frisky. It's going to be like living next door to four labradors.

The nice people next door would know other nice people. They tend to congregate.

It's amazing how friends can slip through your fingers, how your social network can vanish like it never existed. If you don't have a family, if you live in a city designed so that you don't need to connect with anyone, and you drive everywhere, so there is nowhere to walk and nod hello, so you can do all your shopping in soulless supermarkets with blank-faced teenagers scanning your groceries while they look right through you as if you don't exist, because you don't, not really.

Perhaps all grown-ups were just children carefully putting on their grown-up disguises each day and then acting accordingly.