"One Hundred Names" - Cecelia Ahern

'I expected the world to end when she died.' He took a bottle from Kitty, opened it swiftly with a bottle opener that had been on the side table next to the Irish Times crossword, a biro and his reading glasses. 'But it didn't. Everything kept going, everything is still going. Sometimes I go for walks and I find that I have stopped moving, and everything else is still shifting and evolving all around me. And I wonder, don't they know? Don't they know about the terrible thing that has happened?'

That is an excerpt from one of my favourite paragraphs in the book. It was the outpouring of grief described by a man who lost his wife, though the wife is not actually the main character of the book, the wife's mentee was. I'm sure Google will be able to tell you a good synopsis of the book so I shan't get into details on that. How would I describe this book? I finished reading it in two days, and it made me want to flip its pages. I've always been a huge, huge fan of Cecelia Ahern, having read all her novels and I think this is her most mature yet. It's hard to describe how this story unfold, because by describing that, I feel that I might as well tell the story - it really is a book that you have to read because any deeper discussion of its synopsis becomes spoilers.

I am amazed at the level of detail that went into this book especially to ensure the complex themes are interrelated. That said and done, I find that there were too many themes being focused on at the same time and while they were intriguingly unfolding at the start, suddenly they unravel too fast at the end. I'm not a fan of such story flow. Nevertheless, how the author manages to capture one main theme as she branches to other themes yet still keeping a logical connection within them is an effort to be applauded. Moreover, some of the themes were approached creatively, so the stories of the sub-themes were fascinating on their own.

I would count this as an easy read, while less reflective (personally) than her previous novels, I still like how Cecelia Ahern's stories always capture the best of humans' emotions - both the good and bad. The intricacy of emotions are described very well, yet not too lengthy to be discounted as too detailed. It's not a fairytale, but definitely would be considered more chick lit. Though, I do think it deserves to be a class above most chick lits (i.e. Shopaholic series, which I will honestly tell you that I'm not a fan of) because the realistic human emotions brought in.

Again, I think this is my shortest review yet, but I feel that this book is best enjoyed when you really pick it up and read it. For those in UK, it's GBP5.45 for the hardcover in Amazon UK, total steal IMO ;)

(Image source: http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1347868169l/15732712.jpg)

"To seek truth is not necessarily to go on a mission all guns blazing in order to reveal a lie, neither is it to be particularly ground-breaking - it simply is to get to the heart of what is real"