Drawn In
Amazon.com
My review -
Eighteen
year old Natalie is studying Art and spending some time in Florence. Her
boyfriend Rory died in violent circumstances seven months previously and she is
still grieving, to the extent that she hears his voice in her head, encouraging
her to ‘join him’ in the after-life. While in Florence, she sees Arturo,
handsome and talented, drawing a figure on the ground. Later, a man is killed
on this spot, lying exactly as Arturo had portrayed him. Nat discovers that
nobody else can see him or his drawing. She then sees the predicted death of a
young girl and interferes, erasing the drawing. This pulls her in deeper to
find out what’s going on. Meanwhile, the voice of her dead boyfriend calls to her
like a siren-song.
I
always enjoy Nigel Bird’s writing and he’s no one-genre author. I found this
novella very gripping and intriguing. It proposes a means to the afterlife
overseen by a few soul collectors the world over, in order to help souls who
are lost through the violence of their passing. It’s a classic device in a
supernatural story that an unquiet soul can’t rest and it’s a really unusual
idea Nigel Bird has come up with here to postulate a way around this. Natalie
interferes in the process by taking pity on the five year-old who is destined
to die. I found myself thinking that it would be an impossible job for many of
us. Who wouldn’t try to give a child a longer stay on earth? A quick read but,
in places, a very exciting one.
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