The Rag and Bone Man by Lee Morgan skyrocketed to one of my all-time favorite novels in the first chapter and maintains that status now that I have finished it. It is a rare book that I yell at, but I found myself with many opinions that I needed to share quite loudly with the characters. I had to read the book one chapter at a time and then put it down so I could process the emotions that the author was offering up to me in each chapter without so much as an apology for the wild ride. The loss of innocence that occurs with the main characters was crushing at times, but at others it felt like a nostalgically fond memory of my own coming of age. The entire book was like this, moving from gentle tenderness to harsh realities and back with no warning.

The language the author uses covers the spectrum from elegant to common, but the range feels exactly appropriate from moment to moment. The words crept below my skin and into my heart, like the whispers of first love. There is magic and wonder intertwined with brutality and pain in just the right measure throughout. The characters were flawed, some more than others. The main characters were broken and became more so as their circumstances closed in around them, but they were compelling in a way that made you want to sit down and talk about the beauty in the world with them. The author invites you to do just that with his vividly painted universe that comes alive as you read.

The format is unique for a novel, being divided into three sections. The first is called Of the Head and it provides context of the time period in which the story is set and the world in which these characters navigated their lives and the difficult choices they had to make. The second is the story itself and is the majority of the book, entitled Of the Heart. The last section, Of the Hands, describes some of the magickal practices in the story and details how they can be done by the reader.

My apologies for being maddeningly vague about the story itself, but I want you to have the same experience of this beautiful, heart wrenching tale unfold with no warning or expectations as I did. This is a book I will read again (likely in a much more subdued manner) and I am sure I will find nuances and clever bits that I hadn’t noticed the first time, but I will always be a bit sad at the idea that I will not experience the beauty and tragedy within for the first time ever again.

Run, do not walk, to find this book and when you are in the midst of it, be sure to tell the Rag and Bone Man that I think of him still.