Sendker takes pains to develop a realistic world, only to offer Burmese characters who speak almost exclusively in aphorisms (“Whoever forgives is a prisoner no more”), coming across less as flesh-and-blood people than as mystical guideposts for the heroine. The bloody horror of her ordeal opens readers’ eyes to a history of buried atrocities, but the premise for Julia’s visit is tenuous, and its resolution has little to do with her original problem. It turns out to belong to a woman who tried to protect her sons from a raging civil war in the country, only to be forced into a terrible choice. Returning to Burma, Julia enlists U Ba, the half-brother she hasn’t seen in 10 years, to put the unhappy soul to rest. The main character, Julia, is a successful but unhappy lawyer in New York. It could be enjoyed as a standalone novel, but it does contain spoilers for the first therefore readers might prefer to read in order. But when Western medicine fails to give her relief, an old monk at a yoga retreat suggests the pleas come from an unhappy Burmese soul inhabiting her body. 'A Well Tempered Heart' is the sequel to Sendker's bestselling 'Art of Hearing Heartbeats'. At first, Julia Win believes the voice in her head is just a symptom of the stress built up from her high-pressure job and recent breakup. An American tourist’s second trip to her ancestral homeland in search of guidance falls flat in Sendker’s follow-up to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats.
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