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The important thing is to carry the sun with you, inside of you at every moment, against the darkness. For there will be a great and terrifying darkness.
- The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. (Epigraph to The Tightrope Walker)
Maybe everyone lives with terror every minute of every day and buries it, never stopping long enough to look. Or maybe it's just me. I'm speaking here of your ordinary basic terrors like the meaning of life or what if there's no meaning at all...Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know.
Amelia, a sheltered young woman with a traumatic past, is jolted into life and action when she first becomes the proprietor of an antique shop, then finds a note in an old hurdy-gurdy beginning, They’re going to kill me soon.
The mystery aspect is inextricable from the rest of the book, but it’s also a novel of character development and a book about how to live and thrive in a terrifying world. Amelia has anxiety, social and otherwise, and for good reasons; her evolution from spending most of her time locked in her room alone to engaging with fear and joy, both physical and existential, is beautifully depicted.
I had never read anything by Gilman before, though I had vaguely heard of her Mrs. Pollifax series, about an old woman spy. Amelia is a great character, the themes are moving, the plot is solid, and it has a good supporting cast. Even the wise Indian guru wasn’t that bad (low bar, I know), largely due to his philosophy turning out to not be generic wise guru wisdom but something distinctly odd. The love interest also turned out to much less awful than I initially expected.
Most importantly, the writing style is absolutely fantastic, witty and distinctive and an absolute pleasure to read. It grabbed me from the first page and never let me down. I look forward to reading more of Gilman’s books.
I read this one because someone here (whoever it was, thank you very much!) recommended it for integrating an imaginary book, in this case Amelia’s beloved children’s fantasy The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, into the story. This is very well-done, with just enough detail given to show why it was so meaningful to her and also to make it seem worth reading if you like that sort of thing, and also neatly integrated into the plot and themes. It turns out that after publishing this book, Gilman wrote and published The Maze in the Heart of the Castle! I’m not sure if I want to read it, or just keep on imagining it.
The Tightrope Walker
Only $4.99 on Kindle.
- The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. (Epigraph to The Tightrope Walker)
Maybe everyone lives with terror every minute of every day and buries it, never stopping long enough to look. Or maybe it's just me. I'm speaking here of your ordinary basic terrors like the meaning of life or what if there's no meaning at all...Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know.
Amelia, a sheltered young woman with a traumatic past, is jolted into life and action when she first becomes the proprietor of an antique shop, then finds a note in an old hurdy-gurdy beginning, They’re going to kill me soon.
The mystery aspect is inextricable from the rest of the book, but it’s also a novel of character development and a book about how to live and thrive in a terrifying world. Amelia has anxiety, social and otherwise, and for good reasons; her evolution from spending most of her time locked in her room alone to engaging with fear and joy, both physical and existential, is beautifully depicted.
I had never read anything by Gilman before, though I had vaguely heard of her Mrs. Pollifax series, about an old woman spy. Amelia is a great character, the themes are moving, the plot is solid, and it has a good supporting cast. Even the wise Indian guru wasn’t that bad (low bar, I know), largely due to his philosophy turning out to not be generic wise guru wisdom but something distinctly odd. The love interest also turned out to much less awful than I initially expected.
Most importantly, the writing style is absolutely fantastic, witty and distinctive and an absolute pleasure to read. It grabbed me from the first page and never let me down. I look forward to reading more of Gilman’s books.
I read this one because someone here (whoever it was, thank you very much!) recommended it for integrating an imaginary book, in this case Amelia’s beloved children’s fantasy The Maze in the Heart of the Castle, into the story. This is very well-done, with just enough detail given to show why it was so meaningful to her and also to make it seem worth reading if you like that sort of thing, and also neatly integrated into the plot and themes. It turns out that after publishing this book, Gilman wrote and published The Maze in the Heart of the Castle! I’m not sure if I want to read it, or just keep on imagining it.
The Tightrope Walker
Only $4.99 on Kindle.
