LibraryThing Early Reviewers: The Transcriptionist, by Amy Rowland

Lena is a quiet woman who has chosen to live her life in the background of everyone else's until a blind woman she met once on the subway swims a moat and gives herself up to be devoured by the lions in the Bronx Zoo. This inexplicable act by a near-stranger captivates Lena so strongly that she is compelled to change her life. She sees herself in the suicidal blind woman, but she also sees herself in the captive lions; and she spends this novel trying to figure out what that means for her. Rowland's prose is mesmerizing in its lyricism and depth. It draws you in like a mystery novel and then holds you with its character-driven storytelling.

I gave it 5 out of 5 stars.

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