inulro | [books 2012] Charles de Lint

64. The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint

Grace is a young Hispanic woman who makes a living restoring old hot rods, loves rockabilly music, and is covered in tattoos, who lives in a fictional city in the American south west.

Then she is killed in a convenience store robbery, and ends up in a weird limbo afterlife centered on the apartment building where she lived.

On one of the two nights a year she is allowed to cross over to the land of the living, she meets a guy and falls in love.

Eventually she works out why this particular limbo exists and sets out to free all its inhabitants.

Sounds a bit lame, but I couldn't put this book down for the first half. The second half is still good, but it goes in unexpected directions and is really sad in parts. But it's really interesting and sweet and life affirming too.

This is one of the books I bought when I was depressed and unemployed and if I'd realised it was only going to take 3 days to read (mainly for the can't put it down reasons) I would have read it ages ago.

October reading

So I read 8 books in October.

2 non fiction (part for the course; I keep trying to up this)
Beowulf - something that required more effort than I usually make
Only one of these was a library book, but I bought some books, but it is finally starting to look like I'm making a dent in the to-read pile.

Mainly because I've started about 4 books so they're now sitting around elsewhere.