The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite is a book I could not ignore - the cover is gorgeous and tempting and the title evocative and intriguing - who could avoid the temptation? Not me!
I did do a little more research beyond the cover and the title though - there have been lots of good reviews about this one floating around the blogging world - The review from Farm Lane Books is one that I can remember at the moment and the setting of the book did interest me. I am always looking out for novels set in the early 20th Century and I am interested in the setting of the novel - Germany - during this time.
Lilly is born on the very first day of the new century but is quickly orphaned and sent to live in an orphanage run by the first love of Lilly's life, Sister August. It is here that Lilly meets her friend Hanne who will play a part in the rest of her story to come.
I have to say that this book, for me, was bleak - I did not find Lilly's life particularly luminous and I would be really interested to hear why the author chose to use this word. Lilly is certainly resilient and strong but life deals her some pretty awful hands. Just when you thought something was finally going right for her - it didn't.
I found the actual structure of the story quite clunky - the chapters didn't really flow for me and I thought coincidence played too great a part in the events and story line. Having said all that though, I really did enjoy reading this book - something about Lilly kept me hanging in there.
