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Published Sep 2013
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
This stunning debut - like The Lovely Bones - is a child's story narrated from the afterlife, and an emotional fable about love, forgiveness, and what most makes us human.
From the start of this extraordinary first novel, eight-year-old Jess finds herself in heaven reviewing her short life. She is guided in this by a being she calls the Assembler of Parts, and her task, as she understands it, is to glean her life's meaning. From birth, it was obvious that she was unlike other children: she was born without thumbs. The Assembler left out other parts too, for she suffers from a syndrome of birth defects that leaves her flawed. But soon it becomes apparent that by her very imperfections she has a unique ability to draw love from - and heal - those around her, from the team of doctors who rally to her care, to the parents who come together over her, to the grandmother whose guilt she assuages, to the family friend whom she helps reconcile with an angry past. With a voice full of wisdom and humor, she tells their stories too. Yet, only when she dies suddenly and her parents are suspected of neglect, unleashing a chain of events beyond her healing, does the meaning of her life come into full focus. And only then does the Assembler's purpose become clear.
With prose that is rich in emotion - from laughter to tears to outrage to joyful relief - and an eloquence that distills poetry from the language of medicine and the words for ordinary things, Raoul Wientzen has delivered a novel of rare beauty that speaks to subjects as profound as faith, what makes us human, and the value of a life.
BookBrowse Review
"The mysteriously wise and exceedingly joyous voice of Jess, a recently diseased child reviewing her life from heaven, feels at odds with her circumstance. Born with several crippling deformities, including a total lack of hearing, Jess is somehow able to narrate her life - including all the sounds and conversations - in a rich and poetic language that is unfortunately lacking any kind of childlike sensibility or perspective."
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Boasting a fearlessly self-possessed child narrator, this is one of those books you stop what you're doing to finish, take a breath to ponder its profundities, and start again." - Kirkus
"It is a miraculous book that turns our universe inside out, allowing us to view it from an entirely new angle, and Raoul Wientzen brings us such a story. The Assembler of Parts examines that fulcrum where faith and medicine balance, bringing forth the most uniquely humane of answers. Wientzen's book is a jewel that allows us fresh hope." - Randy Susan Meyers, author of The Murderer's Daughters and The Comfort of Lies
"Without pulling any punches, The Assembler of Parts and its wise and unforgettable narrator, Jessica Mary Jackson, will teach you that what could be perceived as tragic is in truth a great opportunity for love, acceptance and healing. I loved it!" - Barbara Esstman, author of The Other Anna and Night Ride Home
"The Assembler of Parts is a remarkable modern fable of grief, redemption, and the durability of family love. With humor, insight, and a touch of the bizarre, the narrator makes us think about the ways we are loved despite our imperfections, and the spark of the divine that makes us human. Raoul Wientzen is a heavenly writer." - Jessica Handler, author of Invisible Sisters: A Memoir and Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss
This information about The Assembler of Parts was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Raoul Wientzen, a graduate of both the college and medical school of Georgetown University, is a pediatrician and taught pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases for more than thirty years at Georgetown University Hospital. He is currently the medical director of the Rostropovich Foundation, an NGO that promotes large-scale public health programs for children in the developing world. He and his wife have four children and live in Arlington, Virginia.
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