Heart of Eternity- N. Jay



To me, this novella is is more to do with extreme emotions in the one being, the author, than a romance between two characters. I read it as a mix of mystical realism and autobiographical mystical soul searching. I see it as a bipolar study of good versus evil personality traits, and an exploration of the inherent dangers in drawing back together compartmentalised emotional states.
The prose is richly descriptive, but in places strangely inconsistent, almost as though the words were arriving on the paper through mystical translation from some other language. I couldn't decide whether the line editor was poor, or if the occasionally strange word choice was a deliberate attempt to reflect thoughts arriving from some half seen other place. Perhaps Jay suffered the indignity of having the original voice distorted rather than clarified by the edit.
The book is well-worth reading, though not so much with the expectation of romance, but rather as a quasi-religious dialogue in which we can explore the writer's, and indeed our own, internal conflicts between often contradictory personality traits. The ending was abrupt, reflecting well the end of life, when long exploration comes to final rest. I assume that was intentional. I didn't much like reading this book, because it was drawing me to places I didn't want to go. That is my unique problem, which isn't, it seems, one shared by most reviewers. When the immediate impact subsides, and there is impact, I should read this book afresh to try and see what I have missed. The many complimentary reviews of this book that I have read highlight many strong positives, which I've interpreted differently. So I must strongly advise that one doesn't read this review without reference to others. I suspect one either immensely enjoys the ploughed furrow, or else wishes the ground to be quickly closed.

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