I know it's ridiculous, but I also know what is real and what is not and that, for the time I'm reading a book, I borrow the love.
The funny thing is, though, what the two people share in this story seems totally feasible to me. They face emotional warts, worries, battles and love and it feels real, so real. As Rebecca S. Book explains she sees the "importance of fiction for representing the human experience."
At the heart of Ros and Anna's situation is the uncertainty of whether two emotionally insecure people (one obviously so and the other hiding her fears behind extreme detachment) can make a go of it. Ros thinks about Anna:
I’m awful at making it clear how I feel, so perhaps it was my fault that she’d not understood me.
Not too long after that, Anna confesses:
Not too long after that, Anna confesses:
"Because you handle life so well. I don’t really know why you think I have anything for you. It’s not about what you can give me, Ros. It’s just about you. You’re beautiful, you’re witty, you’re perceptive and sensitive, you’re brave, and you’re a bloody good kisser."
Ghosts Of Winter is one of the best love stories I've read in ages because it rings more real than most from its genre do and because the two women are so likable, if in need of some enlightenment about each other.
Another terrific thing about the book is how every so often there are chapters featuring other lovelorn couples who have lived in Winter Manor throughout the centuries. These couples aren't so lucky in love, though, with one from the 1920s especially doomed to silently love each other instead of getting together and living happily ever after:
"Do you know, Edith, I think love can exist, even when it’s not acted upon,” Evadne said, daring to express what lay in her heart.
I don't know why, exactly, but that's my favorite line in the book.
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