Ferney - James Long

Can’t say a great deal about this one as it didn’t inspire me enough to finish it. It’s about a young woman called Gally, who is suffering from trauma and other unsettling memories that she can’t really define. When she buys a run-down house in the country with her husband Mike, a history lecturer, things start to feel right. A wise eight-year old man, Ferney, helps her realise that many of the things that trouble her are related to past lives, ones where not only the house feature prominently, but where he himself was often her partner.

What Long does well – and partly, it’s one of the main intentions of the book – is make history seem real and close.  It’s not something in the distant past, but closely connected with who we are. People haven’t really changed so much in all that time and still act out of the same motivations. One of those motivations is “love”, and that’s the other theme of the novel – love transcending time. These two characters have loved each other over many lifetimes, but tragically in this period have not been born at a compatible age where they can be together.

I’m sure that there are many people who will go for that kind of thing, but I personally found it a load of mystico-romantic twaddle, and it wasn’t for me.

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