The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise  ..Julia Stewart

A wonderful story of heartache and healing, loss and love, but I never expected it to be so funny. I had the perfect picture of myself and my best friend in the London Underground Lost Property Office. Those two ladies and their unbelievably lost items had enough humor for the entire book, but that isn’t where it ended. A pastor who hates the Tower’s rat population with a passion but loves the Rack and Ruin’s landlady who also serves as the Fancy Rat Keeper, a Beefeater who collects all types of rain and then becomes the Royal Menagerie’s Keeper, and the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh terrorizing the Chief Yeoman Warder. The writing is eloquent and poignant. The use of first and last names throughout the entirety of the novel had an interesting way of filling out the characters that I would never have thought to work. When I came upon the last page, I actually turned it hoping for more, even knowing that all the loose ends had been tied up and all storylines finished. This is Julia Stewart’s second novel and after this I very much intend on reading her first.