Sometimes, I finish a book and I just want to shout about it; push it into the hands of all my friends, and urge them to read it. This was one of those books. Coming Up For Air was inspired by 'l'inconnue de la Seine' - a nameless young woman who drowned in the Seine in Paris around 1898. After her death, her face was captured in a death mask, and has become well known and famous for its enigmatic quality. It has inspired artists, poets and writers in different countries, and ultimately went on to become the face of the Recusci Anne dolls so many of us have used when on First Aid courses. Sarah Leipciger has taken some of the facts relating to Recusci Anne's creation, and has woven a beautiful story of fiction around them.

Structurally, this book consists of three seemingly separate stories which span centuries, countries and continents. For each narrative, we start later in the characters' lives and then track back to explore their histories and events that have lead them up to the point we met them.

At the heart of the novel we have L'inconnue, a young girl who takes her own life in the Seine in the opening pages. Leipiger imagines a life for her and takes us back to her arrival in Paris almost two years earlier when she came to work as a lady's companion. The Paris depicted in this section is colourful and bustling, and filled with characters from all sections of the human spectrum. 

Next we meet Pieter, a Norwegian toy maker. Married, and a father of two, his section takes the form of a love letter to his youngest child, Bear. This section is based in the 1950's and 60's.

Anouk is the final piece of the jigsaw. Born in Canada in the late 1970's, we meet her as an adult, awaiting a lung transplant. She has lived with Cystic Fibrosis all of her life; has been literally drowning in her own body. 

The theme of water connects all of these stories, and we see how rivers, lakes and oceans can be a life force, providing support and freedom, as well as being a weight, a burden, a thief, stealing us of loved ones and leaving us gasping for air. This is a beautifully told story, tinged with melancholy and with a gentle tension that builds right up to the end.

I absolutely loved it, and cannot recommend it enough.

Thank you so much to Ruth at Transworld who sent me a copy via #Netgalley.

Coming Up for Air is Ms Leipcigar’s sophomore novel and is a masterfully crafted piece of historical fiction, inspired by a true story, that thematically links the lives of three people who had no idea of each other’s existence. Connected by water and breathing the narrative spans a century and begins in 1899 when an unidentified woman is pulled from the River Seine in Paris, France, having drowned after jumping in a successful suicide bid; she became known as L’Inconnue de la Seine. She was found to be so strikingly beautiful in death that a pathologist was inspired to create a death mask modelled on her face. Many years later it went on to become the face for the resuscitation mannequin named Resuscitation Annie. Leipcigar goes on to create a fictional narrative of how the enigmatic woman might have lived as she has never been identified despite a concerted effort to find out about her.

Fast forward to the mid-twentieth century and we meet Norwegian toymaker Pieter Akrehamn who creates the prototype of the resuscitation doll. He lives by the riverside with his wife and family and regularly enjoys taking his young son fishing. But he is now so haunted and torn-up by a loss that he doesn't really live he merely survives. But the tragedy that has befallen him will eventually lead to countless lives being saved in the future. The third story takes place in the 1980s right up to the present day and tells the tale of Anouk, a Canadian journalist who is awaiting a lung transplant that will save her life as she suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and is slowly drowning in her own body. She finds solace in open-air swimming but if she doesn't receive a pair of healthy lungs soon her demise will not be far away. It's very much a race against time.

This is a moving, richly imagined and profoundly emotive read and the thought-provoking stories of these three individuals makes you consider your own mortality. The way each of their stories are tied together is compelling and I was completely absorbed and immersed in the plot from the beginning. The characters are so vivid and engaging that they bound off the pages and into your heart with ease and the writing is nothing short of exquisite. It's spellbinding and the fact that it is based on true events made it all the more remarkable to me. I loved the structure of the book as the three stories being intertwined so beautifully is refreshingly original and served as a reminder that our lives can impact others through the ages. This is a powerful, melancholy story and the use of water and air as connecting themes was poetic and an ode to life as well as death. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Doubleday for an ARC.

Three lives of three people that never knew each other but are still connected with a theme. The story spans a hundred years and tragically begins in 1899 as a young woman plunges into the icy water of the River Seine to take her own life. She didn't know of course how famous her face would become. In real life, the identity of the young woman was never discovered but the author gives her a fictional life of what could have lead to her being unable to carry on. Her drowning is intimately described and will touch the hardest of hearts. Even though her mind is made up that she has no other way out her body's primal instincts battle to keep her alive, unfortunately, her mind wins.
Even in death, there was something very special about this mysterious woman whose body for some reason had not perished or bloated before she was found. Her face was serene and captured in a death mask that artists would be drawn to and over fifty years later would become known to millions and still is even today.
The second story set in the 1950s in Norway where a toymaker lives on the riverside with his wife and young family. He loves to fish and his young son loves to go with him. When a terrible tragedy strikes it sets in motion events that will go on to save millions of lives the world over.
The third story, a third drowning, only this one is an internal defect on a chromosome that causes cystic fibrosis in a young girl that grows up to become a courageous woman. Her daily battle just to breathe as her lungs worsen, waiting desperately for a match of a pair of healthy lungs from someone that will die tragically for her to live a few good years.
Beautifully written with each page I fell deeper into this story and each of their lives, their personal struggles and the people around them that it affected. The connection between the three just made me tingle. It isn't just the stories that make this book brilliant it is that way that every detail matters. The feel of the icy water, the emptiness left in a mother and father and the determination to fight back and know what it is really like to breath for others.
Highly recommended.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

Three very different stories, three different eras, one common thread. First we meet a young woman, driven to end her life on the banks of the River Seine in 1899. Years later, Pieter, a toymaker by trade, is called on to create the prototype for a resuscitation doll. And then there’s Anouk, who wages a daily battle against cystic fibrosis in present day Toronto, while finding a sense of freedom in open air swimming. Vividly real characters, beautiful writing and engaging plot lines make this a book you’ll want to share with anyone who’ll listen.

This is an absolutely beautiful book, the three interwoven stories over the centuries is thought provoking and left me needing to come up for air (pun intended!)

The writing in this book for me was spellbinding, and I was absolutely swept along with all three stories. What made it all the more unputdownable was that it’s based on a true story, a really quite astonishing story anyway.

The way the author has wove fiction into this story is remarkable, it’s just so believable how it is written.

I just loved this book, my thanks to Netgalley and PenguinRandomHouse for the advance copy

Coming up for air is a book that has stayed with me long after I finished reading it. The story has themes of sadness woven throughout, as we follow the stories of three separate individuals all linked in some way by water.

An unknown girl becomes a companion to an elderly Parisian lady, and we follow her as she moves to Paris and learns the ins and outs of living with her companion.

We then travel to meet Anouk, who is slowly drowning in her own body as a result of cystic fibrosis. She’s young when we meet her, her family life slowly unwinding as we join her in her journey.

Finally, we meet Pieter who is driven by a tragic event that happened in the river near their home.

I loved the slow untangling of the three separate stories. The writing is languid and melancholy, and I felt pulled down, as though in water somehow, too.

I felt the further I got through the book the more intertwined each narrative became until at the end we realise it’s all part of the same story. The story gathers pace, just like a river, tumbling together and overlapping.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as the book was billed as the description of the invention of the Resuscitation Annie doll, but I absolutely loved it.

Based on true events this book made me want to find out more about the characters that appear in the story and it has stayed with me for many weeks after I finished reading.

Wow, this is a beautifully written book. Part true and mostly fiction but it sweeps you along with the different stories and the characters emotions. Brilliant #NetGalley#ComingUpforAir

Wow! This is an usual and amazing book that is based on the unknown woman, who drowned and was pulled out of the River Seine in Paris, during the 1880's. She was so striking, that a young pathologist created a death mask from her face. This death mask became a fixture for bohemian artists and was actually exhibited for the world to see. Eventually the mask became the face for the first ever, first aid resuscitation model.
Coming Up For Air follows three characters, beginning with the fictional account of the life of the mystery woman, who's face the death mask belongs. A Norwegian toy-maker who is experimenting with plastics and creating a first aid model, and a young woman suffering from cystic fibrosis, and waiting for a lung transplant, that will save her life.
The stories flow with the analogy of water, breath and life and death through every page.
This is a truly wonderful book and the story made me search for information on L'Inconnue de la Seine ( The unknown woman of the Seine)
Coming Up for Air by Sarah Leipciger. #ComingUpforAir #NetGalley
[NetGalley URL]

I was really intrigued by the concept of this book and like the idea of the 3 stories being linked by water/a struggle for air. Sadly I found quite quickly that the story lines were quite stagnant, with long drawn out chapters about nothing in particular. That on top of a needlessly brutal and gratuitous section about a violent death of a deer, means a very rare 1 star from me.

Without doubt, stunning writing if all a bit depressing .. timeliness of
lung disease description is amazing .. the different ways of contemplating water are poetically and realistically written ..even rigorously .. presented. The voice of the drowning/suicidal speaker at opening, then memorialised and useful medically, figuring in all our stories .. works well despite my worries as I read how it would tie up together. It's the narrative voice and writer's confidence and skill holding it all together that made the connections .. immersive read. Very impressive, and gripping..

It is difficult to rate this book which has 3 viable and essentially interesting narratives but absolutely no connective tissue joining them. I struggled even to get through the text until I decided it just wasn't necessary to work out what the author was trying to say (because whatever it was she was making a complete hash of it), but simply to follow the disparate story lines. I understand the book is based on truth - my question is what truth? What of the 3 divisive narratives was true ? The obligatory LGBT tale and drowning in Paris?, The drowning of Bear ? or the development of cystic fibrosis? My feeling is it none of these - rather it is the development of ResusciAnn - an also ran in the narrative department of this book.

I feel this was a bad book and because it failed to draw together whatever it was aiming to draw tog ether. I feel the reader was let down and I won't be looking for more by this author

Historical fiction entwined with a true story. Three stories so beautifully written and emotive. They span the years starting in 1899 to the present day. Each story is a little gem on its its own but put together in this heartbraking and powerful book is pure gold. I have read this author before and she is definitely one to watch. After reading this book I literally had to come up for air!!!!! This book deserves more than five stars and so Highly Recommended.
Thanks to Random House UK and Netgalley for the ARC.

Coming Up For Air follows three people’s stories across three time zones linked by the theme of water. It starts by creating a narrative behind the resuscitation mannequin used across the world. ’Resuscitation Annie’ is based on the death mask cast from a woman found drowned in the Seine in the 1880s. She was never identified. Leipciger creates a beautiful narrative of how this woman might have lived in the period before her death.

We are then moved to the mid 20th Century, and a toy maker who is haunted by loss linked to water. Then from the 1980s to the present day we follow the story of a young woman drowning in her own lungs due to cystic fibrosis. The themes of loss and water weave these three tales together and even the reading process echoes these themes, because the novel inspires reflection and thoughts of our own mortality. It’s a quiet and introspective reading experience. I found myself thinking a lot about my own loss, my husband died of pneumonia and primary progressive MS in 2007 and also drowned in his own lungs. However, my MS is progressing and I wondered about my own life to come and the ways in which I do follow in his footsteps. That sounds like a morbid reflection, but there is a comfort in the shared elements of these experiences one hundred years apart. It made me think of the Jungian collective consciousness and how much of what we know is shared knowledge.

Water is a metaphor for life. We need it to live. We are drawn towards it - think how many visits we make to the sea, riverside attractions and streams. We build cities around rivers and prioritise sea views when we book a special holiday. We find it exhilarating and welcoming in equal measure. I go into warm water in order to soothe pain, to feel weightless and be able to move easier. It’s amazing how something can give us life, but also have the potential to suffocate, submerge and wash us away. It is strange for me to think about that moment when I float gently in the water and feel cushioned and pain free, but then also think that fluid in my own body could kill me.

The characters in the novel illustrate this dichotomy between life being given and taken away. We each make sense of tragedy in our own ways. For one, water takes life away but also takes away the pain and despair she has felt at the loss of love. For another, a macabre invention is a way out of feeling unbearable grief. A girl fights against a terrible disease that’s literally filling her lungs. Every one of these characters is in a fight with life - trying to live as long as possible, to live with unbearable pain, to leave a life they can no longer bear. Our experiences are not isolated from one another, they are all connected. It made me think about the point at which we truly leave this life. Is it when the heart stops beating or is it when there was no one left in this world to remember us.

This novel made me resolve to talk about Jerzy more, even with my new stepdaughters and nephews who didn’t meet him. I tell them he was charming, cheeky and clever. That when you lose someone the love continues. I found this novel moving, reflective and strangely hopeful. Whatever we experience in life, someone else will have been through it. It made me think of E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End and the exhortation to ‘only connect’.

This book is something special. It's a beautifully written story that spans across three lives and countless years. It's a carefully interwoven tale of intense emotions & feelings.
Wonderfully portrayed and executed by the author. I'd highly recommend this to all.
Thank you to the author, publisher and netgalley for my arc. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.

I couldn't quite get the measure of this book to start with. It dots about historically and it takes a while for the characters to establish themselves. I only really settled into the rhythm of it about 20% of my way through it. There are three main strands to the book which do connect even though at the beginning you might think they don't. This is a clever book which keeps you guessing to the end. Nicely paced and lots of tension. The characterisation is strong and the plot pulls you along. If, like me you are unsure of where you're going with it at the beginning, persevere. It's very clever and a really rewarding read.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Random House UK for the ARC.
This was an interesting read with the author weaving fact and fiction through three lives, each a century apart, and their influence on the creation of the CPR mannequin Resussi Annie (Rescuci Anne).

An unknown woman (L'Inconnue) who drowns in the river Seine in France in the late 1800s.
Pieter Akrehamn, a toymaker and inventor in Norway in the 1950s and his younger days in the 1920s..
Anouk, a journalist from Ottawa River, Canada, from childhood in the late 1980s to the present day; with supplementary points of view from her mother Nora.

All three lives revolve around water and breath.
We learn of the unknown woman's last year of life as companion to an elderly lady in Paris, culminating in her throwing herself in the river in despair. Unidentified she's still beautiful in death and a death mask is made before she is buried. A commercially saleable item many years later, it becomes the face of Resussi Annie.

Pieter, as a young father, loved the river near their home in Norway, swimming and fishing he involved his son in his love for the water - until tragedy strikes.

Anouk, suffering from cystic fibrosis, takes every opportunity between her physiotherapy and medications to use the rivers as a means of strengthening her breathing and the feeling of freedom it gave her.

I found it a little confusing to follow because of the constant swapping of points of view in the timelines, but each part of the story gave real atmosphere to the environments in which the three lives were lived, especially Paris.

As said, it was interesting but hard to follow at times.

This tale tells the story of three extraordinary lives which are woven together over decades and time and continents.
In 1899 a young girl dives into the Seine ending her life.
In the 1950's a Norwegian inventor makes a discovery.
In Canada, in present time, a Canadian is desperate to live.
What links them all together?

A real artefact, the death mask of an unknown nineteenth century French woman, is the starting point for three intersecting stories exploring the events that led to the woman's death by drowning in Paris, the circumstances that prompted a Norwegian toymaker in the middle of the twentieth century to design a manikin for teaching artificial resuscitation, and the experience of a Canadian woman in the twenty-first century awaiting a lung transplant.

The connection between these stories is tenuous – thematic rather than structural – but I was prepared to accept this because the quality of the writing is frankly breath-taking. The observation of detail, the evocation of sense impressions, the author's ability to invest the minutiae of experience with significance – all of these are beautifully realised. Here, for example is a description of the French woman's final journey towards the River Seine, in which she will shortly drown herself:

"Paris. Deepest, coldest night. I consumed the night air like wine, and walked at a brisk pace towards the river. All my senses buzzed. Extinguished gas lamps glowed with the ghosts of remembered light. I thought I could hear laughter and music and the rumble of the underground train tunnel that was being constructed for the World's Fair. Empty hooks in the butcher's window. Horseless carriages lined up in courtyards. The locksmith locked up tight."

I love those empty hooks in the butcher's window. And the gas lamps extinguished now but still glowing with "the ghosts of remembered light." What a perfect turn of phrase! Reading this novel, I felt like I was seeing the world through the eyes of the characters rather than just hearing about it. That's exactly what literary fiction is for.

A thoughtful portrait of intersecting lives across different generations. A book which shows the ripples of how one person can touch another, unknowingly and years apart, over vast distances.
Not fast paced, or full of twists, this was nevertheless a highly enjoyable and thought provoking novel.
The characters are engaging and realistic, containing within a rollercoaster of emotions, which are portrayed well enough to be felt. I found myself empathising with every twist of the characters lives, thoughts and feelings.
A well written story, which I found extremely enjoyable. A relaxing read, yet full of ups and downs. Intriguing, especially as based on certain facts, which are explained at the end. I would read this one again

A beautifully written, evocative tale spanning three different eras and locations. Intriguing and heartbreaking at the same time. I’ve not read this author before, but will look out for her in the future.