The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

God, this could have been SO good! I wish Sendker's writing abilities matched his imagination, because this would have been an awesome book. As it was, it was okay. There is a beautiful love story in the center of the book, but it comes to an extremely trite conclusion. Throughout the novel, he relies on some extremely hackneyed devices that, with just a little effort, could have melted away into masterful writing. First device: relying on long (and I mean REALLY loonnnggg) monologue soliloquy t [...]

I think I've mentioned that for me "reading" has become a luxury the likes of which I sometimes even avoid. Not sure why really, except maybe anger at myself for spending so much time on bad books--badly written, lazily edited, simply or more likely horrifically plotted--I've gotten to where I just don't want to bother anymore simply not to run the risk of feeling like it was time wasted.As a writer myself, I see the puppet strings, the skeletal framework, and at times feel the sweat and tears t [...]

I am somewhat outraged by this book. It is marketed as an inspirational love story, and I would like to say that I strongly disagree. The premise is that Julia's father has disappeared, and she travels to Burma, where he is from, to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance. Let me mention that Julia's parents are still married when he disappears. When Julia gets to Burma, she meets a man who tells a long and somewhat uneventful story of her father's life before he came to the U.S. He was [...]

As I was reading this book I was fully engaged and enjoying the story, the Burmese setting, the fairy tale quality to the narration.but as soon as I finished and started to reflect on it, the whole thing imploded like a house of cards. As much as I really wanted to like this book, it hit several of my hot buttons:I have a real problem with books that are about unrealistic love - the "our love is better/stronger/more meaningful than anyone else's love" kind of love. If Tin Win was so in love with [...]

I have been a little stingy with awarding "5 stars" this year, and this book is an example of why. I want my full "5 stars" to portray to others I read something exquisitely written, wholly engaging, and so profoundly touching. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats was all of those adjectivesd so much more.Julia is in her late 20's and living in New York, has always had a loving father even if his and her mother's marriage was not perfect, and she believes her fast-paced life in the field of law is foll [...]

This book is a perfect example of what I consider "book club bait." A compelling blurb, major publisher's backing, glowing reviews, eloquent prose, family drama, journey of self-discovery, troubled self-sacrificing protagonist who just wants to do "the right thing."Book clubs fall for these things all the time. While I'd like to think my book club is above the baiting (because we're pretty good at weeding them out), once in a while a book like this one comes along and catches us off guard for wh [...]

This is the first review I have written and whilst I could give a plot summary, I feel no need as many others have done a brilliant job of this. I write factual and complex assessments as a part of my job, so feel no desire to analyze this book. I read primarily for enjoyment and relaxation and occasionally enjoy a challenging read. I chose this novel hoping that it would be perfect holiday read, something to savour and delight in, and I was not dissapointed. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats was an [...]

This is the story of a young boy who, born under an unlucky star, goes through great trials and tribulations with his star-crossed love, becomes blind during childhood and, after a period of maladjustment, gains zen superpowers and becomes a celebrity lawyer.If it sounds like I may be mistakenly writing a review for a Daredevil comic, that's not an accident. Because this appalling book, if summarised for, say, Twitter, would be exactly that. Sadly, this story, while being about Daredevil, isn't [...]

The heart of this novel is set in Burma, pre-WWII. The author Sendker was correspondent in America and Asia for Stern, the weekly German news magazine, for some years. This is his first novel. Sendker was successful and very clever in his choice of subject. In making the setting a mountain province of Burma, a country not much opened to the outside and stuck in a pre-WWII lifestyle, things had not changed significantly since the 1950s and if they had, very few English-speaking eyewitnesses would [...]

Essentially a fairy tale so sweet that at times I had to lick the syrup from my fingertips before turning the page. Tin Win and Mi Mi were beautifully rendered, though I felt their story was hampered by the clumsy structure of the book. Julia, the daughter searching for her father, was altogether frustrating as a narrator. The author frequently resorted to long-winded lists of unanswerable questions, such as, "What do we know about our parents, and what do they know about us? And if we don't eve [...]

There was a day when I would have deeply loved this book. It is a modern-day fairy tale and a solid work of literary art. The story follows Julia, a lawyer from New York looking for clues as to her father's sudden (not accidental) disappearance. When her mother gives her a love letter her father had once written to someone -- someone named Mi Mi -- a long time ago, Julia decides to follow the address all the way to her father's hometown in Myanmar. There she encounters U Ba, who tells her the st [...]

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats is unlike any other story I have read. The tale carries the reader through the life of a family man living in New York to his roots in Burma. It is told in such a way that I was perhaps more anxious than the character listening to the story about him to discover how it would unfold!I could not decide on which 'shelf' to place this book. Yes, it is fiction. But it reads as like a very good non-fiction or biography book would. Better, yet, I personally found gems of i [...]

This is a love story and a fairy tale with Buddhist undertones. I loved this book.A New York lawyer inexplicably disappears. His daughter Julia, also a lawyer, goes searching for him in Burma based on an old letter he had written which her mom gave her as part of his belongings.Julia meets a man who has been waiting for her to come, a man who had met her father 4 years ago and has a story to tell her.The story is about two who met when young, a young boy who was blind and a young girl who was un [...]

This sweet, sentimental tale of two disabled Burmese villagers who find each other as children and forge a love so overpowering that it sustains them despite lives lived apart has been compared to a fairy tale. For me it was more like the world's longest fortune cookie. It's not that I didn't get caught up in their ardor-I'm a sucker for love stories- but the simplistic dichotomy it sets up between the life-affirming wisdom of the East and the mercantile obsessions of the West left me cold. I ta [...]

A heartwarming story about love, death, happiness and the senses with traditional Burmese values and beliefs included. A young lawyer travels to a small village in Burma in search of her father, who abandoned his U.S. family. Once there, she finds an old man, who tells her a story about two children with handicaps, who find soulmates, each completing the other. Author Sendeker does a good job weaving the past and present, but it's cliché in many ways.

"There is only one force stronger than fear."This book begins as the story of a daughter (Julia) looking for her father in Burma--the land of his birth. It becomes a potent love story. Love stories--really good love stories--are hard to find, and by extension, must be hard to write. I think that's because in order for a reader to accept the love story, they themselves must, in some measure, fall in love with the characters, or maybe the setting, or circumstance, or writing. At any rate, there ne [...]

Nope. No. Nooo. This was so bad on so many levels. I mean, if you like Paulo Coelho you'll eat this shit up, but ughh. It's so sickly sweet, like eating 17 cubes of sugar and swallowing it down with soda. Had it been written by another author who actually CAN write it might have been pretty OK, but this? Hell. No. It's one of the worst pieces of literature I've ever had the misfortune to come across. It lacks depth, even of it tries really, really hard, and it barely scratches the surface of any [...]

I chose this book somewhat by random reviews, with hopes that it would contain a compelling storyline, and/or wonderful prose. In fact, it does, but more often than not the writing is a little too simple, the storyline a little too unbelievable, and the characters make transformations in attitude for no apparent reason. The storyteller portion of the book drew me in, the story of Mi Mi and Tin Win is touching and sweet enough to keep you reading, but between the jagged and abrupt flashbacks take [...]

This on audio was read very slowly and methodically, which seemed quite appropriate. The wrong voice, the wrong inflections could have made this too sweet to bear. And I just cannot imagine this being half as beautiful if read in its original German language. Ach, nein!But the story slowly pulled me in and made me feel an appreciation and awe for the world we live in, for beauty in nature, for young and enduring love. 3.5 stars.

I love this book and the discussion I am having with my friend about it. Honestly this is one of the best books I read this year smooth,,deep, lovely, wonderful expressions. A perfect gift for a loved one. I want to hear heartbeats and this should be made into a movie.

Chọn đọc cuốn này vì đọc nội dung thấy bối cảnh ở Myanmar, vì yêu Myanmar quá nên không thể từ chối được, bìa bản tiếng Việt khá đẹp với hình ảnh khá đặc trưng cho Myanmar là vùng đất cổ Bagan xinh đẹp, nhưng mà đọc sách mới thấy bìa hơi. không liên quan, vì bối cảnh của cuốn sách chủ yêu ở vùng Kalaw, có dính tí xíu Ragoon chứ tuyệt nhiên không có Bagan đâu có, chắc bạn làm bìa [...]

Sometimes I hate giving stars. I waffled between 3 and 4 on this one. Based on the title and a review I read, I wanted this to be one of my favorite books of all time. Unfortunately, the writing didn’t sing for me. But since it is a translation, I am giving Sendker the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it would have if I had been able to read it in German.The reason I am being so lenient is because I think this book has an important message for us Westerners. In several of the other Goodr [...]

"Learn to perceive the essence of a thing. Eyes are more likely to hinder you in that regard. They distract us. We live to be dazzled."In the same spirit, Jan-Philipp Sendker writes THE HEART OF HEARING HEARTBEATS as the slow unveiling of a story. We meet Julia on her quest to find her father, who disappeared without a trace. She’s on her way to a small town in Burma, with a single love letter as her only clue. Stumbling into a café, jet-lagged and heart-broken, she meets a man who begins to [...]

Meh. Just not my kind of book.The frame of the story is that Julia's father has disappeared, possibly to his hometown in Burma, and that Julia travels there to find him. Julia is then treated to a fairy-tale-like story of her father and his childhood (but everlasting) love, growing up in rural Burma. Her father was blind, his love Mimi was crippled, the two of them were good-looking, saintly, perpetually lovable, and had a passion at 20 that somehow outlasted decades of separation with each of t [...]

If there could possibly be a perfect book for me at this precise moment in my life, having just lost my father who was very precious to me, this was it. Set in Burma, it reads like a fairy tale that is real enough you don't have to completely suspend disbelief but magical enough to draw you into all of the beautiful hidden messages that hover just below the main plot of the story. As I read slowly so as to savor it and not finish too soon I found myself thinking about love, loyalty, imaginatio [...]

I loved everything about this book, from its cover, the title and the beautiful prose that evoked images and sentiments that were magical. This is a book about a love that lived for over 40 yrs. and a daughter's quest to discover the father that disappeared and the father she never really knew. Most of the book takes place in Burma and is told with a mix of Burmese folk tales and superstitions and in a story related by another to the daughter who comes searching for her father. It is about a boy [...]

Wonderful lines about love, death, happiness and the senses. Traditional Burmese beliefs described within the story. You must pay careful attention or you will find yourself confused. I was a bit upset at the end when I was not sure who one main character was. (view spoiler)[Was U Ba Mi Mi’s brother? (hide spoiler)] That is why I gave it three rather than four stars. This could have been my fault rather than the book’s.

2.5 starsThis is one of those stories I have a hard time rating mainly because there was a lot of potential here. At the hands of a better writer this story could be a 5, but there was so much that bothered me I’m going to go with a 3 or more like a 2.5 instead. A fellow Goodreader namedMimi wrote a review on this book calling it "book club bait."I couldn't agree more and funny enough book club is the only reason I came across this novel. Would I have picked it up on my own? Maybe…if I was i [...]

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This book is a wonderfully special treasure. A book about the strength of love, and the pull it has, over distance and over years, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats captivated me from the start and didn't let me go, and now I can't stop thinking about it. Don't you love books like that? Just shortly after her graduation from law school, Julia Win's steadfastly reliable father, a successful attorney in his own right, disappears without a trace. Although he told his family he was meeting a client in B [...]