"Take hold of this book with your fingers, your hands, your arms!"

By Alexander "Sandy" Prisant

You may not want to sit down with Claudia Ricci’s new novel Seeing Red with an e-reader. You may prefer to take hold of this book with your fingers, your hands, your arms. It’s that human.

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This is a book that makes us wonder where much of our fiction would come from if it were not for those two species: “men” and “women.” We easily identify with imperfect characters and their messy lives because they’re thinking about the very things we think about, all the time.

Ricci has not only crafted wonderfully-flawed characters, she has brilliantly painted in the scenery around those characters. To the best of my knowledge, the author has not lived in Spain. To my certain knowledge, I lived there for four years. So how can she be creating descriptive landscapes from all across the Spanish countryside that elicit such vivid recall in my memory? How does she do that?

There is much to reflect on in Seeing Red. And several life lessons to consider.

My favorite:

“The memories of him as a little boy have taught her that nothing lasts, that life is a flood of ephemeral moments that fly by.”

In Seeing Red, Claudia Ricci has much to say, not just about the human condition, but about human beings. About ourselves.

Sandy Prisant is a frequent contributor to MyStoryLives. His series, "The Journey We Take Alone," is documenting his struggle to survive a very challenging kidney disorder. This review appeared first on Prisant's blog, called Wordsmith Wars.