Author: Matt Haig
(Notes:
1. For spoilers, select the spoiler text to reveal it.
2. The highlighted text is also posted on Goodreads, but, in true alexithymic fashion, I didn’t realize I had a built-in cultural lens for a read in a somewhat different tone that I think is at least as accurate. That read is at the end, without highlight.)
Great premise, well materialized. There are pages and paragraphs that can be philosophical springboards, as well as somewhat dragging portions that I tend to find jarring — possibly because the medium is not the ideal one for rendering lively small-talk, even if the content of the exchange does further the action.
LE: This was a verbose way of saying that about halfway through, I was getting bored. [SPOILER: The MC was inevitably becoming wiser, comprehension was erasing depression (or rather smudging it much like a pencil eraser would smudge ink on paper), the structural bones of the book were growing conspicuous...and this reader was beginning to wonder if this is more an intellectual exercise pushed a little too far via plot construction than it is anything else.]
My source: local public library.
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/125105/9781632869968
Bonus: expanded understanding of what sells.