Girls, You Have GOT To Read This!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                 The hairs bristled on the back of my neck,  when I saw all the  blurbs comparing this novel to "Doctor Zhivago," by Boris  Pasternak.  You have got to be kidding.

                                                  But, girls, they are not.  The tale of Lucius,  a young Viennese man, who enlists in the war (WWI) and works  along a  nurse  named Margarete, is very much like Zhivago and Lara.  Margarete is  as mysterious and  enigmatic as the latter,  and Lucius' tortured and tormented pursuit of her echoes  that of  Yuri Zhivago.

                                                   Don't think  your heads will  fill with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Lucius and Margarete are  singular individuals, and the depiction  of war and the pain of the hospital  conditions both must work  under echoes today's  times. though Daniel  Mason  published  it  in  2018.  Its blend of history and  romance is  literate, but lacks the scope and poetry of Pasternak.  I mean, who could  top that?????????????

                                                      But it has a  sweep and  a  flourish that most  of  this  genre does not.  It was highly recommended  by  one I trust,  and, once more,  I was  not steered wrong.

                                                       The ending had  me  in tears.  Mason  has  written a novel  that grabs the reader, satisfies  from  a  literary standpoint, and singles him out as an author who bears watching.

                                                         One of the best reads I have had this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!