Susan Shaw Female, Married. New York, NY, USA

I love this book. Nothing is as it seems in this masterful fiction. First of all, there is no family named "Nightingales" in these connected stories. The nightingales are nurses, women who care for others, apparitions, and the title of a water ballet concocted by a dipso Jesuit. And every human sense -- taste, touch, sound, sight, smell -- is lovingly rendered into a state that is all the more real for its particular oddity. It's that oddity bordering on unreality, the totally fresh and unusual cast of characters and their response to ordinary events and emotions, that makes this fiction so powerful. This writer knows feeling, and I never felt manipulated into it. She also knows economy. There's not a wasted word in this book, which is best read slowly, the way you'd enjoy an expensive, perfectly seasoned dinner of complex flavors and textures. I had no trouble keeping these memorable characters apart, a problem that sometimes crops up in linked stories. I especially loved the character Annie, who is born in the first chapter and weaves her way through every decade in the century. The writing has an Irish feeling, like Edna O'Brien or Joyce, where every sentence has it's own music. I found myself rereading paragraphs just because they were so beautiful, and there aren't many fiction writers who do this for me. This book aches with loss, surprises with wit, and left me with much to think about. A fun read that's deeply layered with love and loneliness.