A really wonderful book about figuring out how to live a meaningful life, that unfortunately ends with the romance of the two protagonists. I am all about figuring out how to live a meaningful life, but I am so completely done with love being the answer. ( )

We're led so logically step-by-step into the existential dilemmas of Neale's and Marise's inner lives that it's a little disappointing to watch them resolve everything more by mutual epiphany than anything else. But that's just the ending, and follows the necessities of a traditional book structure: "struggle, struggle, struggle, happy ending" just doesn't lend itself to a dissection of how it takes time to undo the bitterness and pain of those long struggles. I suppose the proper reader ought to simply accept that this will happen in due course after the walk into the sunset, and not feel too curious about the details of it.

In any case, that's just the ending and the rest of the book is lovely. I fell in love with Marise almost immediately; Neale was a little creepy when first introduced as a quiet, bloodthirsty child, and has an irritating way of swinging from one idée fixe to another (just the sort of thing that makes the improper reader wish for proof that he'll stick with Marise longer than any other passing fancy) but he's a decent, earnest sort of bloke all in all and did end up growing on me. ( )