Rosner, Elizabeth "The Speed of Light"

Rosner, Elizabeth "The Speed of Light" - 2001

I read this quite a while ago but this is one of those stories that stay with you forever. All three characters are struggling with either their own or their parents' past, with a story they could not change, they were completely innocent in. The author manages to describe their feelings so delicately as if they were her own. That makes the novel even more fascinating. I would love to read more of her works.

However, I have never found anyone who read this book. How sad. I definitely highly recommend it.

"Every family has a story. Every story, eventually, must be told. For most of their lives, Julian Perel and his sister, Paula, lived in a house cast in silence, witnesses to a father struggling with a devastating secret too painful to share. Though their father took his demons to the grave, his past refuses to rest.

As adults, brother and sister struggle to find their voices. A scientist governed by numbers and logic, Julian now lives an ordered life of routine and seclusion. In contrast, Paula has entered the world as eagerly as Julian retracts from it. An aspiring opera singer, she is always moving, buoyant with sound.

Yet both their lives begin to change on a Wednesday, miercoles, the day that sounds like miracles. Before embarking on a European opera tour, Paula asks her housekeeper, Sola, to stay at her place--and to look after Julian in the apartment above. Yet Sola, too, has a story." (From the Publisher)