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brianreynolds
Jun 02, 2011brianreynolds rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Sometimes a book presents itself to a reader at the most opportune moment possible, speaks personally as if answers were given before the questions were known. When that happens, "amazing" is a lock whether "amazing" has or may not have much to do with literary merit. Such a reader may be so biased that his "review" should be suspect, and that seems to be the case with this reader and The Post-Birthday World. Shriver has "stopped by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," that evening being the breakdown of a loving relationship. The two roads that lie ahead for Irina McGovern, the one not taken and the one taken, seem clear, final, and real. Life however is not like that and neither is Shiver's novel. Life is filled with what if and what. Life is full of what is real and what might have been. Emotions can be controlled. Or they are controlling. "Something you suffer, or something you make?" Once made, the only certainty is that the choice cannot be unmade. At the crossroads, one senses the cataclysm. One thinks they have a pretty good idea what lies ahead in either direction, that the choice, while difficult, is knowable. How easily in life tides turn, paths twist, and fortunes change. Standing at the juncture, all one knows for sure is which ever path is chosen the world will never be the same. Shriver is frighteningly honest and poignantly brave in her narrative. Her characters come alive by travelling both roads simultaneously, fleshed out by both reality and dream, never totally one or the other, never certain if when the trails intersect, they have wandered from one dimension into the other. Brilliant!