Author: Alex Landragin
Publisher: Picador
Publication Date: 28 May 2019
Pages: 356
Format: Paperback
Genre: Fantasy
Source: ARC from Publisher
I didn't write this book. I stole it...
A Parisian bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript containing three stories, each as unlikely as the other.
The first, 'The Education of a Monster', is a letter penned by the poet Charles Baudelaire to an illiterate girl. The second, 'City of Ghosts', is a noir romance set in Paris in 1940 as the Germans are invading. The third, 'Tales of the Albatross', is the strangest of the three: the autobiography of a deathless enchantress. Together, they tell the tale of two lost souls peregrinating through time.
An unforgettable tour de force, Crossings is a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes.
Crossings was an inventive and captivating read. In the end I decided to read the work in the back-and-forth approach, and I enjoyed seeing how the stories within the three distinct works intertwined. This is a book that would have taken a lot of planning, and, being a pantster myself, I applaud Landragin for that. The characters and situations are interesting, and I particularly appreciated the way historical personages and events wove through the narrative. In the future I would like to reread this work in the traditional manner, to see how that compares. Overall, though, this is a work of great imagination that always keeps you guessing. I would certainly pick up future books by this author.
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