The Gift

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Gabe wishes he was somewhere warm. When Lou invites Gabe, a homeless man who sits outside his office, into the building and into his life, Lou’s world is changed beyond all measure. I loved the beginning how it starts off on one story that I thought the book was about but ends up being taking you down a whole different route.

This book is special. Cecelia Ahern writes in such a descriptive and evocative way. The feelings and moods she describes are visceral. Beyond that, the reader is presented with a unique premise with which to digest not only human behaviour but mental health. I loved reading about Alice's journey and was captivated by her colourful insights into the people she met. 'One by one and all at once, I have seen and felt, All the colours of living.' I highly recommend this book. Alice which is the main character She can see your feelings with colours so like blue is for feeling sad .I was very Captivated by Alice as a character herself self and really felt Sadness for her, As I can imagine it's pretty overwhelming Not just feeling your own emotions but everybody else is around you. But it also comes from places so maybe that she can get an image image in her head and she can't get that out and it can be massive overload of emotions.

The Gift

There are some big leaps forward in time, but for the most part I didn't felt that I needed to know the detail of what had happened in the intervening years. It's only towards the end, when suddenly there are children and grandchildren, that it feels too rushed.

I went to The Bear and Bull Bar in the Waldorf Astoria in NY to do a TV Business & Finance show and I distinctly remember a woman asking me - off air - if I could attend a specific event. I recall saying "If I can clone myself I'll be there" and then BAM there was my idea. I admit it's not a light, jolly tale but the veins of hope that run through it as the story progresses makes it such a beautiful and unique read. From her extraordinarily difficult childhood, we follow Alice throughout her life, dealing with her strange gift which she cannot describe, therefore nobody can understand, and consequently has her labelled a troublemaker. Relationships with her siblings and her mother are complicated. Her school days are fraught with problems due to her condition preventing her from making friends, until she finds people she can relate to in a special school, just one of many breakthrough moments in the story.Gabe keeps challenging Lou to spend more time with his family, and eventually gives him some tablets that split Lou in two for a day so he can be in two places at the same time. This story is pretty fast pace and I think and I think the writing is just absolutely wonderful clearly wonderful Celia never disappoints me. It's definitely one of those stories which is unforgettable and I don't really want to give too much away so that people actually get to read it and enjoy it like I did We see glimpses of her past, future and present as she goes to a special school, her life after that as she starts to try and discover who she is and meeting people who accept her. Some who even think she is special in ways she doesn't even known. Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

I loathed Lou, the main character throughout most of the book. I thought he was a pretentious bastard, quite frankly. It was rather evident from the beginning that Lou only considered his own happiness important. But as the book reads on Lou is taught some valuable lessons, and nearing the end of the book I actually came to like Lou a little bit. A stunning, wonderful, powerful tale: Alice lives with her mother and two brothers, one older and one younger. Alice has synaesthesia (to see or feel in colours)only this isn't recognised until she is older and sadly she is seen as being different and a trouble maker. She sees the anger in her mother and the calm in her older brother. Imagine being able to see and hence make a judgement of someone by the colour surrounding them. When there is a crowd you are overwhelmed, when seeing strangers you can make a call. When Hugo, her older brother, goes to university and her younger brother is on the wrong side of the law it is left to Alice to look after her mother as she is now in a wheelchair. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, which I think is so easy when giving a review – I highly recommend this book. Such a beautiful story of family and love. I was pretty sure this was going to be a story about him realizing how wrong he was, then making a 180 and changing his life drastically. That did happen, sort of, and at the same time it didn't. Honestly, I don't know what to think of the ending. I guess it's making sure the author's message comes across clearly, but at the same time I felt it was kind of unnecessary.

Featured Reviews

This isn't a light read, rather one that makes you sit and reflect upon it as you go through it. Alice develops the ability to see people's emotions as auras and how this interacts between different people. She struggles with her mother, who is later diagnosed as bipolar, and younger brother, but is supported by her older brother. The story follows Alice through her life and the detrimental effect that her ability has on her interactions with others. The story follows Alice with her gift, and the people in her life – her disturbing and difficult relationship with her Mother and Brother Ollie, her elder Brother Hugh and then later her first boyfriend, husband, children and grandchildren.