"Three breaths, he thought.

Just three more breaths. Then I’ll go in and save my friend”.

So ends Andrew Miller’s Oxygen, a brilliant novel about second chances, about the opportunity to deliver oneself by saving others. The novel is dipped in the pain of disability, physical and emotional, and yet somehow redeems itself through the possibility of salvation – of opportunities that re-incarnate and re-present themselves, so that we may once again, save ourselves.

Okay, look at me waxing poetic, but that’s the novel rubbing off. Its definitely a think-read, and I did enjoy taking it at the slow pace that I did – I wouldn’t have want to rush through it feverishly like I would a Salman Rushdie. This book is fine wine, to be sipped, savoured, and lingered over. More Miller on this table, please!

Also, besides the setting in Paris, an author who has written Oxygène within the novel, Miller’s book also has the ambience of things French – in the language itself, in its elegance and maturity in things emotional – no embarrassed terseness, but a precise deliberation over emotions of every kind: loss, love, guilt, and surprise! - there is a part where the word leaped leaps out of the book just so, in italics.