Random Acts of Heroic Love

Danny Scheinmann

Average Rating 9/10 (1 Review)

Two tales of love

Two stories of loss

One great emotional journey...

1992: Leo Deakin wakes up in a hospital somewhere in South America, his girlfriend Eleni is dead and Leo doesn't know where he is or how Eleni died. He blames himself for the tragedy and is sucked into a spiral of despair. But Leo is about to discover something which will change his life forever.

1917: Moritz Daniecki is a fugitive from a Siberian POW camp. Seven thousand kilometres over the Russian Steppes separate him from his village and his sweetheart, whose memory has kept him alive through carnage and captivity. The Great War may be over, but Moritz now faces a perilous journey across a continent riven by civil war. When Moritz finally limps back into his village to claim the hand of the woman he left behind, will she still be waiting?

Danny Scheinmann paints a dramatic portrait of two men sustaining their lives through the memory of love. Cinematic and brimming with raw emotions, it is the magnificent and emotive debut from a remarkable new writer.

'Really is as special as its press suggests... beautifully told...an amazingly assured debut.'

'Two strikingly different tales of love and grief are gradually revealed to have more in common than just the tenactiy of both men to cling desperately to the memory of love...a lush, romantic novel.'

Review by Lisa (140908) Rating (9/10)

Review by Lisa
Rating 9/10
Two stories are beautifully interwoven in this moving novel. Part set in the 1990's and part set in the early 1900's two stories of a love that travels long distances and vanquishes death.

In the early 1990's Leo is involved in a bus crash in South America where his girlfriend Eleni dies. Leo tells his story after Eleni's death, searching for her and the epic love they had through the days and years that follow her death, finding her in the mating rituals of ants and in the logic of quantum physics. While there are no twists and turns, no rollercoasters of emotion, you are strangely drawn into the day to day grief that Leo experiences.

Running parallel to Leo's story Mauritz is telling his story to his young son fishel in Eastern Europe on the cusp of the Second World War. Mauritz tells of how he left the love of his life, having kissed her only once, to fight a civil war in his own country. His story tells of how moving from civil war he began to fight against some of his closest neighbours, including the Russians, eventually ending up a POW at the very most east end of Russia. As the Bolshevik revolution picks up momentum in the 1918 Mauritz escapes his prison and walks across the full length of Russia to find his one and only love, meeting many inspiring and terrifying people along the way.

Both stories can't fail to move you to reassess what is really important in life, whether we should enjoy the journey rather than where we are trying to get to for fear of missing out on life along the way. The surprising climax will have you in tears unless you have a heart of stone, when Leo and Mauritz's stories become intertwined across the boundaries of time. One of those books that stays with you and makes you think!
Lisa (14th September 2008)