Here's the synopsis: It's a lovely Friday (Good Friday to be exact), on a twisted mountain road and our narrator, high on something and drinking to boot, wrecks his car causing it to tumble down a ravine. As he lies , trapped, upside down in the wreckage, his car bursts into flames, leaving him to burn along with it. Fortunately (or unfortunately as our narrator sees it) there's a stream nearby that saves his life. In the months following he recovers, against all odds and so he plots and plans for his release and a most amazing suicide. Several months into his painful recovery, a woman unknown to him (a psyche ward patient it seems), Marianne Engel, begins visiting him. She claims that they were lovers in 14th century Germany and this is his third serious burn. She's there to see him through his rehabilitation and in doing so she leads him through their years together with stories of their many past lives in Iceland, Japan, Italy and of course Germany where the journey began. The narrator finds himself looking forward again and her stories breathe life back into an existence he thought was destroyed forever. Their journey together is unbelievable and yet...
I had this book on my shelves for a long time before finally picking it up and deciding to read...it doesn't scream "feel good", that's for sure. The first few chapters are quite repulsive as the reader suffers the descriptions of our narrators horrible burns. It turns out, this book is, actually, a feel good book, however, one has go through a bit of suffering to get to the good stuff. But doesn't suffering sometimes go hand in hand with love? It certainly does for our narrator and Marianne Engel.
Read this book. It was incredibly powerful and one of the greatest love stories I've read in a long time. LOVED!
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