Rusticles: Real Beauty Never Dies

You watch a huge white canvas from the comfort of your armchair and a painter mixing colors before applying her first spontaneous strokes on its surface. A rough sound of brush mingles with the enthusiastic chirping of the birds, the dance of the wind and the light curtains at the open balcony door and the clinging of the ice in the half-filled glass of lemonade sweating in your hand. Soft French music plays on the gramophone in the darkest corner of the room. Maybe Edith Piaf? Non, je ne regrette rien followed by La vie en rose? 

Rebecca Gransden is the painter and Rusticles is the painting. As you read it in the silence of your room, devoid of outside distractions of the modern world, you are contemplating the beauty that prostrates before you. One short story after another, one stroke of a brush giving you goosebumps after another.

This is the book you need to read slowly. Only then you will grasp its depth and the ingeniousness of the writing that sometimes surprises you and sometimes leaves you with brief questions to which you must find answers by yourself. This is the intelligent collection of short stories and—oh boy, why I am not surprised?!—it may not have the fate of a shooting-star-bestseller-to-be-replaced-with-another-bestseller in a few days, weeks, months. It rather tastes and smells like evergreen... like a potential classic.

I am glad I bought this book and I recommend everyone who craves for the beauty of the written word to have it in their library. I hope for its long life as it conquers the hearts of many readers, like a perfect rosebud or a breathtaking painting coated with a fine layer of protective rust.   

Time is gentle with things of significance and real beauty never dies. 

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Book cover photo source: Goodreads