The category of favorite books has always been one with which I've struggled, due largely in part to the fact that I love far too many books to pick one that I love most, but there's a good chance that this book is the best book I've ever read.
The President's Hat chronicles the lives of a few different characters who come in contact with a hat that happens to belong to the current president of the Republic of France. It's a beautiful story, weaving together a glorious fiction with real historic events and people, and it was absolutely spellbinding. I didn't even get a chance to take a picture of it, because I sent it home for my parents to read. I read it quickly, but found myself re-reading bits here and there, if only to make it last longer.
It wasn't just that Antoine Laurain's prose is spellbinding, or that he manages to make twists and turns both comforting and breathtaking, or even that the ending is an intricately impossible marriage of not-what-I-expected to makes-perfect-sense. It was more the sense that this story was alive, and by reading it, I became alive.
Every so often, a story wakes you up. It speaks to you, reveals things about your heart and beliefs and dreams, and this was one of those rare books for me. I saw God in The President's Hat, which might sound utterly ridiculous, but the idea that our imaginations and make-believes and what-ifs are intrinsically tied to the reality surrounding us felt absolutely transcendent and holy.
You have to, have to, have to read this.
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