No Two Persons - Erica Bauermeister - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Erica Bauermeister

GENRE: Contemporary Fiction.

PUBLICATION DATE: May 2, 2023

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary composite novel. One plot comprising multiple short stories. Character-oriented. Poignant, mellow, touching. An ode to books and everything bookish. After a long time, I had a soul-satisfying read. Definitely recommended.

Plot Preview:

2010. Maine. Twenty-five-year-old Alice has always wanted to be a writer. But as she is inching towards her dream, a family tragedy throws her off her charted course. Her college professor encourages her to pour her emotions into writing. The result is a book that ends up finding its way to multiple people, and in many cases, altering at least a part of their lives directly or indirectly.

This is a composite novel, where each chapter comes to us from a specific character’s point of view. We thus get nine stories written in the third-person perspective of various individuals, with the epilogue coming a full circle.

One of my favourite bookish quotes is “No two persons ever read the same book”. The novel takes inspiration from this quote both in its title and in its content. The result is a mesmerising journey about how books can change lives.

Bookish Yays:

📚 The structure – one book, one author, nine potential readers, ten individual stories, one connecting thread. The perfect composite novel. (This cannot be called a collection of interconnected short stories as there are no direct interconnections across the characters.)

📚 The nine characters. People of various backgrounds, personalities, and life situations. Each so intricately carved that they all feel equally known to us. Most are isolated in some way or the other, but they also have family/friend connections that help us see them better.

📚 The cleverness in the choice of the nine characters. Many are connected to the publishing world, but not all. Many are readers, but not all. Many read ‘Theo’, but not all. And yet all of their lives are impacted by the book. The variety of their individual experiences with the book makes things even more interesting. I also love that the book focusses more on their individual arcs than on establishing interrelationships with the other driving characters.

📚 The completeness of each individual’s narrative. Each arc is treated like an independent plot, so it is like reading a short story with a proper start-middle-finish. The finish might not be a HEA, but it is never abrupt or dangling. Every ending left me longing to know what happened next in the best way possible.

📚 ‘Theo’, the book written by Alice and the thread tying the whole plot together. Whatever glimpses I got of ‘Theo’ made me regret that this wasn’t a story-within-a-story. I’d have loved to read ‘Theo’ the novel. The star of this story is not Alice but ‘Theo’.

📚 The ode to reading. My cup overfloweth with emotions! Such luscious descriptions of how books and writing help us escape painful reality that this avid reader was mesmerised!

📚 The insights into a bookish world we rarely see, coming from publicists, literary agents, and audiobook narrators. I've never seen the process of writing and audiobook-narrating described so realistically and beautifully!

📚 The quotes. The insights. The learnings! If I had had the physical copy, I would have highlighted so many lines!

📚 The emotions in some of the individual narratives. It’s always an amazing feeling when we can identify with characters and their struggles. I kept nodding or shaking my head at them.

📚 The ending. And the epilogue. Perfection!

📚 The author’s note, listing her inspiration for many of the stories. I am always amazed by how creative some authors are in taking mundane ideas and turning them into something memorable.

📚 The cover. For a book about books and readers, this cover art is the best way of demonstrating how we dive into books differently.

Bookish Okays:

📖 The writing is obviously character-oriented, so the pacing is on the slower side. But I loved the individual narratives so much that I didn’t even feel any frustration.

📖 Given that the book comprises nine individuals’ stories, we have nine lengthy chapters, one per character. Plus, each character’s arc ends with their chapter. So every chapter is like a fresh story from some other character. Readers who prefer shorter chapters and compounded storytelling might not enjoy this. I’m an avid reader of story collections, so this point didn’t bother me much. Just as in short story collections, some stories go better than others. But there’s not a single boring story!

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 8 hrs 55 min, is narrated by nine narrators, one voicing each character. This is such a brilliant decision! Macmillan Audio really is among the best audiobook producers.

The audiobook has a special final section containing an interview between the author and one of the narrators. This was the icing on the cake! I loved how both these talented individuals reveal some inside titbits about their work in this interview.

I absolutely enjoyed this audiobook and would recommend it to everyone. Audio newbies might like to try immersion reading, with the audio playing in your ears and the book in front of your eyes, so that you can keep track of the characters if needed.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. It isn't the only composite novel I have read, but it is definitely among the best ones. The bookish snippets in each character’s narrative just add to the experience.

Definitely recommended. This should ideally work for most people who are passionate about books, but it might help if you enjoy character-oriented writing and short story collections.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing the DRC of “No Two Persons” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.