The Lost Language Of Cranes is so extraordinarily beautiful that it feels like a giant hole has been torn through my chest, right where my heart used to be. I'm a sucker for a book that focusses solely on characters and their lives, and more often than not, my favourite books are contemporaries that leave me wanting more. David Leavitt does everything I want an author to: subtle emotions that leave tears in my eyes and make me want to scream with the unjustness of it all; writing people, not two-dimensional characters (I feel so deeply for all the people in this book, I really really do); taking the seemingly obvious and turning it completely upside down; using the most amazing combinations of words to describe something as mundane as snow. I've not read a book so quickly in a long time and all I want to do is read it again. I can't stop thinking about this novel and I don't think I ever will. It's gonna stay with me for a really, really long time.