A Well-Tempered Heart by Jan-Philipp Sendker

I was deeply moved when I read the beautiful love story contained in the international best-seller by Jan-Philipp Sendker called The Art of Hearing Heartbeats which I have recommended as a possible title for our staff book club. In A Well-Tempered Heart, Sendker picks up the story after a hiatus of 10 years. Once again, he combines two stories in one, having Julia Win fly to Burma in an attempt to deal with troubled spirits, both her own and that of a woman’s voice she keeps hearing.  Together with her half-brother, U Ba, Julia travels and learns about the life of Nu Nu and two brothers (Ko Gyi and Thar Thar) and their struggles for survival in Burma.

I enjoy Sendker’s writing and his almost mystical comments, like

• "Our life’s work is to solve ourselves."
• "Why do we so often put off the things that matter most to us?"
• "Not all truths are explicable, and not all explicable things are true."
• "How thin is the wall between us and madness?"
• Or, acknowledging Buddha, "No sorrow can befall those who never try to possess people and things as their own." 
• "People who love are dangerous.  They know no fear. They obey other laws."
• "It is our own flaws that we are least ready to forgive in others."

A Well-Tempered Heart is a book to read in a reflective mode, one to savor, ignoring time, soothing one's own spirit, and opening up to the messages for "the world is full of signs. One needed only to know how to see and interpret them."