  i have just finished reading urlLink the catalpa tree , and i feel like i have been steamrollered by love and loss and grief and longing. i have not been this emotionally engaged in, and affected by, a book since i finished reading urlLink i capture the castle ...and looking back, that was at easter.
i wonder what i have been reading since then that has left me so relatively unmoved, so shallowly involved that i can put down the book and move on with my life. now, i feel like jude and oliver will be with me for days, lurking in the background of my consciousness, almost more real than my colleagues and my family. three years ago while i was reading urlLink fire and hemlock , my life passed in a blur. i caught the train, moved through the office, answered phones, ate my lunch, almost unaware of the real world, completely engaged in polly's twin worlds of middleton and nowhere.
i am still amazed, and awed, by the power that words can exert. simple shapes on a page bring to life whole worlds, people, places, fresh every time the book is opened. with enough skill, we can be made to feel their pain, laugh when they laugh, love as they do. and it never ceases to amaze me that urlLink i capture the castle was written by the same author as urlLink the hundred and one dalmatians . 
