Yann Martel burst onto the literary scene with his award winning seafaring fable, The Life of Pi.  Now fifteen years later he has returned with another story about the meaning of loss and the way we journey through grief.

Set in Portugal, the story begins with Tomas, who in the space of one week has lost his father, his young wife and their newborn son. Slightly unhinged by grief, Tomas discovers an old journal written by a priest who served as a missionary on an island used as a base for slave traders. The priest, also slightly unhinged by what his experiences, hints at a religious artifact that Tomas is convinced will redefine history. So Tomas sets out on a quest to the high mountains of Portugal in one of the new fangled machines called an automobile, to find this mysterious artifact.

Thirty-five years later a Portuguese pathologist, who loves Agatha Christie mysteries is visited by an old woman who demands that he perform an autopsy on her husband to find not how he died, but how he lived.  Strangely the doctor finds, during the course of this highly unusual autopsy, the connections between this man’s death and the quixotic quest of Tomas.

We then jump some fifty years ahead and meet a Canadian senator who returns to his native land of Portugal after the death of his wife. Traveling with an unusual companion, a chimpanzee, he finds in a remote village in the high mountains, acceptance as well as the answers he needs to find closure for his grief and loss.

Martel has offered us a tender, surprising and at times, even humorous story about the the vagaries of loss, the weight of grief and the soul’s endless search for meaning. Spanning through the century, it is partly a historical novel and yet its surprising twists remind us that we are not traveling in a straight line through the territory of reality and facts, but often stray into the land of metaphor, faith and the heart. Martel’s prose is seamless and descriptive and the emotions of the characters; their grief, anger, joy and love are vibrant and deeply felt. This is an exquisite meditation on grief, faith and the depth of the soul’s work to find meaning in our pain.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Marian, Lauren Keith and Ken

Book Study Worthy? YES

Read in ebook format.