Click Here To Purchase In Memory of Central Park: 1853 - 2022

Author: Queenelle Minet

Publisher: Synergy Books

ISBN: 978-1-934454-25-1 

Noah, the narrator of this tale, works as a psychotherapist and is used to dealing with other peoples problems. His regular client, Amy, is dying and it seems he may be the only one who can offer her the support she so desperately requires.  However Noah has problems much closer to home then he thinks.

He is falling madly in love with his brother’s wife, Margaret, and he can’t control his feelings. Even though he knows its wrong, Noah is drawn to Margaret and unable to let her go from his life.

Here is a man who is torn between right and wrong. Does he do what is right by his family and stay away from the woman he loves or will his emotions get the better of him? 

During Sunday morning brunch with Adam - Noah’s brother - Margaret, their mother plus a host of friends, Noah finds his foot pressing on top of Margaret’s under the cover of the dining table. Before he knows it, Noah whispers to Margaret: “Come to my office, I’ll be there until six”.

I was gripped from then on. What will happen? Is Noah ready to admit the truth that he loves her?

Later during an afternoon session with Amy, she asks if Noah ever considers what happens after you die. Amy gives her opinion on death as “strangers will touch my body and go through my things”. Suddenly it occurs to Noah, as it does to me, that death is “a loss of privacy”.  

This is something Noah will be looking at very closely later on in this book when the whole futuristic city of New York, which is covered by huge thick walls allowing no sunshine or fresh air through, is under siege from pollution and chemicals.

There are of course more sharp observations throughout this tremendously brilliant novel.

When Noah convinces himself Margaret is not interested, he ponders over his father who was a baker and descendant of Orthodox Jews who emigrated from a Russian-Polish border village. Noah’s father hated his job and seldom talked to Noah or his brother, Adam.

Will the next turn of events cause Noah to take after his father and struggle to communicate with his brother?

I thought the whole angle of this was quite ironic that Noah is a therapist who helps other people with their problems but can’t seem to help his own love life.

What happens to Carl one of the therapists Noah works with? This turn of events was not expected and shocked me. What kind of accident occurred which the police branded as an “unfortunate malfunction in the plumbing”? NOT for the faint hearted. 

One character in this novel talks so sweetly about how they let their beloved friend pass into the next life: “I told her not to be afraid. I told her that she was going to splinter into a million billion shiny little pieces and expand and expand until she filled the whole universe, and that she’d feel joyful and free.”

This moved me very much and almost had me in floods of tears.

Toward the end Noah describes how when we are faced with immense grief in life we vocalize a unique sound: “It comes from a deeper place inside us than we know normally exists.” This is indeed a thing he is familiar with as the story unfolds.

Will Noah and Margaret ever be together? And can they save each other before it’s too late? 

A brilliant, aching love story for all to read. Queenelle is a literary genius who never fails to impress. I loved this book with its undertones that warn us about global warming and I shall endeavour to read it again.