Star Gazing: An epic, uplifting love story unlike any you’ve read before

I love this author's novels. They are always a little more intellectual than some of the more 'slushy' chicklit. I am not knocking that. Sometimes in this life slushy is just what you need. Having said that, or rather written that, the descriptive can become tedious. However not in this particular novel.I am ashamed to say I had forgotten about the Pipa Alpha disaster but this brought back the memories of that awful time and those harrowing TV reels. I hadn't realised until now that nobody or conglomerate was ever held responsible.On a happier note I loved the brave, witty, sometimes abrasive, character of the heroine.What wonderfully sensitive and imaginative person would think of turning the seeing world into orchestra.Loved it. I don't usually give such a gushy review.

This is one of my all-time favourite books. For me it is a beautiful distraction. Marianne Fraser is the strong heroine of the story not only is she blind from birth but she is fiercely independent.Music fills her world and she is a great lover of opera she says it "pours a vision of a wider world into her ears" (taken from chapter 1) she also tells us in the same chapter "music goes directly to her heart, it pierces her soul and stirs her with nameless emotions, countless ideas and aural pictures". Simply beautiful.One of my most favourite parts is early on in the book when Marianne meets Kier whilst seated in Edingburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden 'listening' to the trees. She tells us in Chapter 2 that she can find her own way to the ‘Botanics’ as she has “memorised her route as a sequence of numbers”.In chapter 2 Kier asks Marianne if she would like him to describe himself to her. She asks at one point “if the colour of your hair were a smell, what would it be?” at first he says “That’s a tough one. It’s a rich brown. Goes a bit red in the summer.” “Useless. I need smells” Marianne tells him. Then on the second attempt he gets it perfectly right “Walnuts. Walnuts when you crack them open at Christmas”. Isn’t that description so delicious? Linda Gillard has got descriptive writing down to a pure art form.From this beautiful book I learned how to cherish the gifts I was born with, I take nothing for granted. I purchased and now often listen to some of the music mentioned in the book. I close my eyes and listen to it from Marianne’s viewpoint. I love to walk around my environment and take in everything, especially when strolling through the woods. I inhale my surroundings; I listen to the wind & rain in the trees. Everything is so beautiful, oh and yes like Marianne I have been known to hug a tree or two. (My favourite local trees are the imported Redwoods in Queenswood, Hereford, West Midlands UK. The texture of the bark is amazing, they really invite you to touch them in my mind they are truly caress-able LOL)A truly beautiful book & my favourite one of all time. One of the few books I read over and over again. Very highly recommended.

This is a beautiful, imaginative and heart-felt story of a blind woman's courage and adventure into a future she's reluctant to engage trust. The description of how a blind person experiences life and just what the limitations and amazing gifts of instinct and innovation they might have was wonderfully insightful. It isn't easy to imagine being blind, no matter how hard a sighted person tries. It revealed how very frightening it would to be if one was so hindered, and yet this wonderful, strong-minded and, at times, pig-headed woman tackles things a sighted person would shrink from. She's feisty, vulnerable, strong and generous too. I loved the settings, the characters and the twists and turns of the plot. Marriane and her sister Louisa are contrasting characters that give the story breadth and add a touch of humour to a serious, delightful and amazing story. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the ending of this intricate love story between Marriane and Kier had me guessing all the way to the end. Brilliant!!!

I mean, I don’t usually do romantic slop fiction, and resigned myself to pushing through this, and then wow, I was rooting for Marianne, kicking her sister, crying for Keir, kicking Keir, and couldn’t cook tea until I knew what had happened.

I finished reading ‘Star Gazing’ by Lind Gillard this week. Someone recommended it to me as one of ‘the best books ever written’ and not sure about that claim, but I did enjoy it. It was all about the life and loves of a blind woman, particularly apt for me now, as I am having problems with my own eyesight.My optician can do no more to help me to see any better, but recommends that I take frequent breaks from books and the computer. When I asked how frequent, he thought that after every twenty minutes I should rest my eyes for ten minutes.As you can imagine, this upset me a great deal as everything I love to do involves wearing my glasses. Refusing to co-operate is not really an option, for if I forget, I get the most awful giddiness and nausea.So, was reading a book about blindness a good idea?In a way it was, for far from being a sad book, I was introduced to a very different world, one full of the importance of touching, and noises, smells and emotions. The way someone can describe what the rest of us see, in such a way that a blind person can ‘see’ it too.For example, ‘ice’ was described as ‘frozen music’.What made me think was the power our memories have, and how somebody who has no memories can manage to create some, even if they cannot see.