Lilli Jolgren Day

Kindle

3.5 ★

Bobby Weaver is a young writer, currently in a coma.
He "comments on life about him" and continues to work on the murder mystery he was writing before "the accident".
Day-in-the-life vignettes of his family explore the life left behind.
Especially interesting is his interaction with 4 year old niece, Chloe and her flow of thought and communication with Uncle Bobby.

The epilogue of this debut novel continues with other ethereal aspects of Bobby's state of being.

" It is a reminder that we have so little time"… (plus d'informations)

I chose to read the book The Wonder of Ordinary Magic due to the summary given above. I was intrigued by the idea of a character being in a coma, and of being inside the head of that character. So often there is a character in a coma, but they aren’t much of a big part of the story other than another object in the room. Getting to see what might be going on in the mind of a patient in a coma could be interesting, and then throw in the fact that he is a writer trying to finish up his book, I definitely wanted to see what that would be like to read.

I was disappointed once I began reading. It took me a while to get through the first chapter due to the character having a hard time (I know it’s part of his character’s personality and the fact that this was inside of an injured head) following along with what was going on. The flow of thought this character had went from one thing to something completely off topic, and very often to yet another topic, before coming back to the original topic. At that point as a reader, I forgot the first topic existed. I’ve read books that have tangents, but this book didn’t go back to the main point fast enough to hold everything together. The same can be said with many other chapters in this book, the ones dealing with the other characters. I feel the transitions between the giving of back story were too abrupt and came back to the present just as abruptly. This left the story as a whole feeling disjointed and incomplete.

What also didn’t seem to work, for me, in this book was how each chapter was from a different character’s point of view. I’ve read other books that do this, but the amount of characters in this one was overwhelming. It also didn’t help that there were only two females, and only a few letters starting their names (Miranda, Michael, Jack, John, Josh…there was also the deceased Mary). This is one of the few times I’ve had to make a list, and also a family tree, to keep everything in order. It took me about half the book to get the relations straightened out. While those relations are mainly blood relations, and one marriage to link the coma patient, Bobby, to the other two families, there doesn’t seem like much (inside the time frame of the book) connecting of the characters. It’s only in the last few chapters that I felt that something might actually happen. What did happen finally isn’t even worth noting, but I’ll say it anyway: there were a few five minute conversations between a few characters, then the ending of the book happened (that I’ll get to soon).

The strange thing about the entire experience is that the book gave me enough to latch onto. I continued to read with hope that all the elements I was enjoying would come together giving me some insight into the bigger picture. There didn’t seem to be a bigger picture. I think that the book is a great start, but there could be at least another third added to bring out the conflicts that never went anywhere other than a minor mention (marriage problems, loneliness, etc.)

*Spoiler Alert*
My biggest upset in this book was the ending. I am a person who wishes to NOT spoil the ending of a book, movie, or anything else of the sort. But for this, I have to. I can’t not comment on this. So Bobby, the character in the coma, just finished writing his story in his head (which had a disappointing ending in itself, and I showed more interest in that story than the book itself) then he dies. The dying doesn’t bother me. I was expecting it for the most part. The next few (and final) pages “help” to explain why Bobby is in a coma. This is something I was wondering about during the entire book and almost gave up on. Ok, so Bobby dies, he goes around to see the other characters as a spirit one last time. That’s all fine and dandy. Then he thinks about what got him a coma in the first place. He was driving in NYC with his wife (who it seemed the book implied was alive, with a beautiful baby, but then again the other characters probably were not discussing what I’m about to say in front of Bobby) then after almost running head on into a taxi cab, there’s a bright light then darkness. Bobby is then standing in front of his wife’s grave. It states that she died on September 11, 2001 at the site of WTC attacks. That is SO unnecessary. To me it was as if the author was trying to get the reader to sympathize the character because of the use of that date. I would have given more credit if it had just been a head on collision with the taxi moments earlier. At least that way I think about it is if she just died and he was injured enough to be in a coma. But what is implied is that the car was hit by the falling building or some other debris. I’m pretty sure Bobby would have just died along with his wife, if that were the case. If you throw 9/11 into a book, give the reader more to work with instead of closing the book on that information.
*End Spoiler*

Why did this book get a three, with so much that I’m saying against it? It’s because I honestly wanted to keep reading it. After the first few shaky chapters, I got into the (unsteady) rhythm that the book had and wanted to see what was going to happen. Just because I ended up more disappointed didn’t completely kill that feeling I had earlier in the book. But this is still a borderline three from me. If this author writes another book, I most likely would give it another chance. I would just hope it pulls itself together much better than this one did.

Thanks for bearing with me, since I’m sure this sounded more like a rant than anything else.… (plus d'informations)