Sci Fi & Fantasy , Women's Fiction
Gallic Books
03 May 2016
9781910477212
£12.99
NetGalley
The villagers had never seen anything like it: dense white curtains of snow that instantly transformed the landscape. Not in autumn, not here in Burgundy. And on the same night a baby was discovered, dark-eyed little Maria, who would transform all their lives.
Hundreds of miles away in the mountains of Abruzzo, another foundling, Clara, astonishes everyone with her extraordinary talent for piano-playing. But her gifts go far beyond simple musicianship.
As a time of great danger looms, though the girls know nothing of each other, it is the bond that unites them and others like them, which will ultimately offer the only chance for good to prevail in the world.
First of all for those who loved “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”: forget about that one when you start reading “The Life of Elves”. They are 2 completely different books and genres. “The Life of Elves” is more a fantasy fairy tale, a bit in the style of Tolkien.
The story is descriptive (Barbery uses a lot of text to describing details) which is distracting from the plot. Sometimes she strays away from the story to, lengthy, describe the weather for instance. The story is not really set in a specific time period even though we get some hints which contradict them self. The main characters Clara and Maria, although they are opposites, do not show a lot of difference in character. All of these make the book a bit cloudy and hard to follow. On top of that there’s a layer of spirituality which is just not my thing. This book is the first part of a series and that might explain the lack of certain details and background info.
However: the descriptive nature of this book is well written and the story itself poetical.
