Patrick Gale

This book is classesd as an epic and in some ways it is, it has most importantly, impossible love, a sweeping sense of time and place as well as larger than life characters. However one thing that it doesn’t have is length. It is a relatively quick read at roughly 330 pages but when you think epic you think works such as Gone with the Wind, War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago or A Suitable Boy. Novels that are peopled with huge numbers of characters and where the main protagonists are given the space and time to explore their emotions, other characters and their surroundings. When Harry gets to Canada he meets a man called Munck, a very shady individual who leaves a deep wound on Harry. But he also meets his new neighbours Paul and Petra, brother and sister and it turns out that Paul has a very similar story to Harry’s. Inevitably Harry and Paul fall in love but it doesn’t run smoothly. There is a lot of heartache but also a lot of hope in this book but it is not really an epic and points have to be taken off for the final Vulcan words ‘live long and prosper’ that Hector says to Harry. Otherwise a fine and finely wrought story.