The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland

Just as all songs seem to be about love, I find that fiction seems to be often about loneliness or that very human need to connect.  Amy Rowland's first novel The Transcriptionist does this elegantly.  Her prose is soft and gentle and I melted into this intelligent novel.  Lena works alone in a small office transcribing by dictaphone stories for a large New York paper.  She lives alone in a ywca by Gramercy Park.  What brings Lena out of her solitude is a brief connection with a blind woman on a bus whose suicide (by entering a lion's den at the zoo) she transcribes.   Amy leaves her solitude to go on search of this stranger's life in order to give it meaning.   The book has several plot points which, despite the short length of the novel, unfold slowly and gently.  Amy Rowland has a deliberate way of writing, each word necessary, which I loved.