A ROOM WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE A BODY WITHOUT A SOUL - Cicero
I used to be such an avid reader and have recently vowed to get back into it... even if it just for thirty minutes a day. I really want to start a modern book club too and need to just find the time to make that happen. I would love feedback from anyone who has started one!!
I decided to revisit an old favorite of mine a few weeks ago.
The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy. (A series of three best-selling-epistolary novels written by Nick Bantock.) The novels in the series, Griffin and Sabine, Sabine's Notebook and The Golden Mean, were first published in 1991, 1992, and 1993. The story is told through removable letters and postcards (which became my refrigerator art in High School) between the two main characters.
Griffin Moss is an artist living in London who makes postcards for a living. He is unhappy and lonely, though he is unaware of these feelings. His life is changed forever when he receives a cryptic postcard from Sabine Strohem, a woman he has never met. Like Griffin, she is an artist (she illustrates postage stamps) and comes from a fictional group of small islands in the South Pacific known as the Sicmon Islands. The two begin to correspond regularly.
Griffin comes to realize that he is in love with Sabine, who reciprocates his feelings, and that they are soulmates. However, his growing uncertainty as to Sabine's true nature and the changes her presence has caused in his life develops into fear and he ends up rejecting her offer for him to come see her in person. He comes to the conclusion that Sabine is a figment of his imagination, created from his own loneliness. It appears to be true until another postcard arrives from Sabine with an ominous promise that if he will not come to her, she will go to him:
“Griffin — Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened. You do not dismiss a muse at a whim. If you will not join me, then I will come to you.”
In the second volume Sabine moves to Griffin's house in London while he wanders through Europe, North Africa, and Asia, backwards through layers of ancient civilizations — and of himself.
In the final volume, the mystery of the two artists deepens and their questions grow more urgent. New obstacles (including a sinister intruder) test the tenacity of their passion, and in each letter or postcard, painting and prose are even more richly intertwined.
I promise you will not put these down..not even to pee.
I am on the edge of my seat...again !
Soooooo good !!!!!
You will not regret these purchases .
Xo,
Sam