Jaffareadstoo is really excited to be part of The Lion Tamer Who Lost Blog Tour
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| Orenda 30 September 2018 My thanks to the publishers and Random Things Tours for my invitation to be part of this blog tour and for my copy of the book |
What's it all about...
Be careful what you wish for…
Long ago, Andrew made a childhood wish, and kept it in a silver box. When it finally comes true, he wishes it hadn't...
Long ago, Ben made a promise and he had a dream: to travel to Africa to volunteer at a lion reserve.
When he finally makes it, it isn’t for the reasons he imagined…
Ben and Andrew keep meeting in unexpected places, and the intense relationship that develops seems to be guided by fate. Or is it?
What if the very thing that draws them together is tainted by past secrets that threaten everything?
Here's what I thought about it...
I don't know where to start with this one because no matter how hard I try I won't do justice to this poignant, beautiful, heart-breaking story, which by the last few words had me a blubbering wreck, and not with those tears which roll, ladylike, down your cheeks, but with those big, ugly tears which run like a torrent, and which leave you wrung out like a wet cloth.
I came to the book knowing nothing of its content, and when I first saw the title, I naively thought it was going to be, mainly, a story about taming lions, and whilst lions, and two very special ones in particular, do feature in the story, it's about so much more than animal conservation. At its core, The Lion Tamer Who Lost is a story about friendship and family, it's about feeling lost and alone, bewildered and frightened, and it's also a rather beautiful love story between Ben and Andrew and of their close relationship which society still doesn’t fully understand.
The story is beautifully written, by an author who, with perfect precision, has the ability to take you from the absolute solitude of a wild African dawn, with its lingering scent of heat and dust, to the pungent aroma of stale booze and cigarettes in a tiny northern kitchen. And as you travel in your mind, the writing never falters or fails to reach out both physically and emotionally. It will make you stop, think, consider, rant, laugh, and, ultimately, when you read those last two lines of the story, unless you have a heart made of granite, will make you weep those big, ugly tears.
Books come and books go, and some may even linger in the memory a little while longer before they fade. The difference between those stories and this one is that the beautiful complexity of The Lion Tamer Who Lost will stay with you forever.
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| My Reading Table |
Louise Beech is an exceptional literary talent, whose debut novel How To Be Brave was a Guardian Readers’ Choice for 2015. The sequel, The Mountain in My Shoe was shortlisted for Not the Booker Prize. Her third book, Maria in the Moon, was widely reviewed and critically acclaimed. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice. Louise lives with her husband and children on the outskirts of Hull, and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012.
Twitter @LouiseWriter #LionTamerWhoLost
@OrendaBooks
#RandomThingsTours
This is wonderful! Thanks so much for supporting the Blog Tour Jo x
ReplyDeleteThanks for the invitation to the blog tour, Anne. As you can see I loved this one x
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