TSS: Literary Blog Hop

Hosted by The Blue Bookcase

Please highlight one of your favorite books and why you would consider it "literary."

I have been reading a lot of Crime fiction for the past two years. However, I used to read varied genres and still do. Literary fiction and classic literature have always been on my reading list. (Despite my current reading slump, I have many of those books lined up on my tbr pile).

How does one highlight only one literary fiction when there are too many to recommend? Out of some of the literary fiction I read in 2010, I recommend the following. Do check out the review to know why I recommend it. 
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She said she wanted to be like the trees, that she had read they were most trusting of creatures because they put their roots down in one place, knowing they'd be there for their entire lives."~Page 41

Title: the Language of Trees
Author: Ilie Ruby
ISBN: 978-0061898648
Publisher: Avon HarperCollins/2010
Pages:339

One only has to look at the trees to learn all about roots, being totally grounded or be down to earth. Every part of a tree speaks to us. Reaches out to us. This novel too does that for the reader. Yet we find the novel in the realms of what is nowadays called magical realism. Roots (of ones own self) and flying (that of the mind) go hand in hand. 

Grant Shongo is back to his roots in Canandaiga, to deal with his broken heart. His wife has left him and he knows that only solace he will get is by coming back to his childhood home. He also knows that his Seneca blood will not let him rest until he deals with a past tragedy. The spirit of a young boy, haunts him.

Melanie and her sister are unable to get over the death of their younger brother, Luke, which happened more than a decade ago. Almost eveyone who had been connected with Luke, has not been able to get over it. Then Melanie disappears all of a sudden leaving her boyfriend, Lion and their newly born son, Lucas...

Echo O'Connell, too comes back to the place she calls home after 15 years. When she meets with Grant again, she knows that, she can't go back, leaving her first love. But before both can find love love again, they have to face the past, the spirits of the place, the whisperings of the trees. Echo has to let Grant know, what he really is. Only then the healing can overcome the past tragedy, the spirit may leave to rest eternally.

How the lives of Grant, Echo, Melanie are connected by a spirit? Why is Luke not ready t leave yet? The secondary charracters are all essential for the story and have been well etched out by the author. I really loved the language in the Language of Trees, both literally and figuratively.