New Story, Same Old Tears

I just read a brillant, albeit irreverant, novel, The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue. This is her debut novel, and I picked it up at the bookstore because the title intrigued me. The book is narrated by a ghost, but it is not so much a ghost story as it is a love story. Unlike the last book I read, this book was eloquently written enough that it jolted me back to the reality that my own talent is far too meager to ever produce a work of literary merit. I'd be more likely to write a story like the last one I read rather than one like The Mercy of Thin Air. I lack both the imagination and the mastery of the English language, not to mention the mastery of the human heart or soul. Also unlike the last book that I read, this story was more emotionally tense for me and left my in tears in my husband's arms with him asking if someone got engaged in the book since that seems to make me cry more than death. I told him not exactly, but that the book was about love. I don't know why reading about or watching other people in love breaks my heart so much. I am sure there are many ways to psychoanalyze my tears, but these tears over love were not there before I got married myself. In Domingue's story, love transcends human form. In her world, love is more powerful than life and more powerful than death. The transcendent power of love that Domingue captures in her unique way is what moved me to tears after reading this book. What moved me to tears when I watched the Friends rerun of Monica and Chandler getting engaged was something less brilliantly composed but similarly addressing the kind of love that binds people together, at least for life. Love that even if I have experienced, I will never fully grasp because love, I believe, is beyond our grasp. It is a force that simply is; it can be explored but not understood, touched but not contained. And, in simplest terms, that overwhelming love is what this book is about, and the exploration of that love is what makes this novel a worthwhile read. Which is another way this book is different from the last one I read, I am not ashamed to recommend it or say that I read it myself.