Rating: 3 out of 5

This book was mentioned in an article I was reading - http://www.theliteraryplatform.com/2012/09/how-digital-is-making-maps-personal/ which says :

“novelist Nicholas Royle’s ‘The Matter of the Heart‘, involves the notion of ‘Emotional Routes’: discrete ways around a city, adopted by individuals, based not on the most direct ways to travel between places, but on areas and streets that are meaningful to them, so that when taken they deliberately pass through places that resonate with the emotional charge of past encounters, events and situations.”

Which sounded intriguing.

The first two thirds of the book reads like a road trip book, flashing from current to past, filling in the background of characters we come across, and how they relate to this one room in a former hospital. This is the part of the book that I surprised myself by liking the most.

The final part of the book has a change of pace, and a different focus, and just didn’t flow as well for me. And the ending felt like a whimper, not a bang. Had promise but failed to deliver.

Originally posted to my Goodreads account