A review by sarahrahrah
No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister

adventurous emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Holy shit, this book. This one.

Picking up a book was a decision: I'm going to go away. The exciting possibility: I may not come back the same.

From my dear Grandma Kerry's column "The Book Woman" in the Broomfield Enterprise, Best Books of 2023:
"No Two Persons” by Erica Bauermeister—“No two persons ever read the same book” is illustrated by the effect of one novel on its many readers. It's an unusual take on the power of books and reading.

That was the beauty of books, wasn't it? They took you places you didn't know you needed to go.

There are things you can't see until you are ready to look.

In this book, we get vignettes of the lives of ten people: the writer, the assistant, the actor, (the Internet), the artist, the diver, the teenager, the bookseller, the caretaker, the coordinator, and the agent. I fell in love with every single character and then some. Each chapter feels like an entire world and story in itself, and I liked the subtle connections these strangers have though their reading of one particular book and also in other ways. I want to reread it already, this time with my own print copy so I can highlight the beautiful prose and annotate all the little clues and connections threaded throughout. 

From the author's acknowledgements: 

A great book is one that you love. May you find many.