The Book of Tomorrow - Cecelia Ahern, Author

 

Tamara and her mother Jennifer have moved into the gatehouse occupied by Author and Rosaleen Kilsaney after her father’s suicide.  After living a life of luxury, never being denied anything, life in the country becomes quite a challenge.  Then Tamara has a visit from Marcus and his traveling library. 

 

‘Dear Diary,

Is that what I’m supposed to write?  I’ve never written in one of these before, and I feel like an absolute dork, beyond words.  Okay so, Dear Diary, I hate my life.  Here it is in a nutshell.  My dad killed himself, we lost our house and absolutely everything.  I lost my life, Mum lost her mind, and now we’re living in Hicksville with two sociopaths.  A few days ago I spent the afternoon with a really cute guy called Marcus who is Vice Present of Dork Central, a traveling library.  Two days ago I met a nun who keeps bees and breaks locks and yesterday I spent most of the morning sitting in a ruin- “Ruin” had been crossed out and beside it was:  castle on a stairway to heaven that looked very tempting to climb and leap for a cloud that would carry me away from here.  Now it’s nighttime and I’m back in my bedroom writing in this dorky diary that Sister Ignatius talked me into doing.  Yes, she’s a nun and not a transvestite, as I’d previously thought.’

 

This is the first entry written into the mysterious book found by Tamara Goodwin in the “traveling library.”  It had no name on the cover nor spine but was sealed with a lock.  But with the help of Sister Ignatius, the lock is picked and Tamara is encouraged by the Nun that it might be therapeutic if Tamara wrote her activities and feelings every evening.  After giving it a bit of thought, she decides keeping a diary just might be what she needs.  That is until she opens the book to write her first entry and finds, in her own hand writing, an entry already entered.  Problem is, the entry is dated for the next day’s events. 

 

Finding this quite impossible, Tamara decides to test the diary’s words.  As the day progresses she remembers what she “had written” and surprisingly it was all happening just as the book had said.  To prove this she opened the diary to reread the entry only to find the words disappearing and new words taking form, these becoming the entry for what would happen the next day.  After giving this much thought, Tamara decides to see if she can change events by not following the entries that were written for the next day.  To her amazement, it actually worked.  Now she can change her own history.  But should she?  What will the repercussions be?  Will any changes be for the better or the worse? 

 

Tamara finds herself pretty much on her own to the grounds around the gatehouse.  In doing so, she discovers a “secret garden” cared for by Sister Ignatius as well as a burned out castle.  Her curiosity has her wanting to know more about the castle as well as it’s fire but when she asks Sister Ignatius, she suggests that she ask her Aunt Roseleen or Uncle Author.  But Roseleen is a very mysterious person who refuses to divulge any information about the past.  Tamara becomes even more confused as she discovers the “glass woman” and the garden of glass hangings.  She has a feeling that these finds must be kept from Roseleen.  But for some reason Tamara knows that the castle, the glass woman, Sister Ignatius, Rosaleene and the diary all have a connection.

 

The Book of Tomorrow is a beautiful book of love, deceit, tragedy and mystery all written into one.  The characters come to life as being so real that you feel you actually know them and their lives.  But the biggest surprise of the book comes at the very end as all of the pieces of the puzzle are placed together to make it a complete picture.

 

2011

312 pages

Harper Collins  Publishers

ISBN# 978-0-06-170630-1