Caravanserai mobile, music - and guano.

Meeting for the first time on a 'plane en route to Paris, passengers Dodi and Jebby feel an immediate attraction to each other, which feeling becomes love and they have been together, when this story commences, for seven years. This is not a romance but it is a love story because, with the meeting with Dodi, Jebby, from whose point of view this story is told, also begins to have visions, flashbacks which entirely consume her, to another couple in the long past, Hopi Indians, and their story as well as the present day one, intertwine together throughout the book.

Jebby is a recorder of music whilst Jodi is a renowned magazine photographer and together, with Mickey and Minnie, Jenny's assistants, they travel the world recording and taking pictures in exotic and remote locations. The scenery and ambience of the different locations is beautifully, visually given to the reader with a light and exquisite touch. The whole book is one of delight and exploration, of the places visited, it's music and history and myths, it's peoples - and always there is also the ongoing story of the other life, the customs and loves of the Indian couple.

It is hard to express in a few sentences the beauty and strangeness of this truly delightful story and the fascination aroused in the reader of the lives both present and past. Denise Kahn is a writer of great skill and she has proved, with this book, her ability as a narrator also. With clarity and perfect gentle pacing, she relates this complex tale, always capturing not only the musicality of the text itself but also giving clearly differentiated and appropriate voice to all of her protagonists, both male and female. Even her accents, of which there are many in this cosmopolitan story, seem perfectly reproduced, the only exception being that of Mickey, one of the travelling companions and assistant to Jebby, who is Australian - but without the destinations Aussie twang.

As mentioned previously, this is a love story, love of life, of music, of food and ideas and of a couple.And how love can endure beyond physical death.
My profound thanks to the rights holder of Split-Second Lifetime for gifting me a complimentary copy via FAFY, at my request. It is a wonderful, even inspiring book which demands the listener's full attention but which I have no hesitation in recommending.

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