This is an excellent book overall and is the text for the National Center for Homeopathy's study group course. Dr. Panos gives verbose, anecdotal images of the differences between the different remedies for a given ailment, as well as good general background on homeopathy.

Of all the homeopathic books written for the general public, this is one of the most useful. If you've suffered a minor injury, or come down with a cold, flu or earache, or if you are having an upset stomach, this book will quickly guide you to the correct remedy. It is easily understood by the medical layperson, and it will give you solid knowledge of how to treat yourself and others in a safe, natural way, without the risks, side-effects and costs of conventional drugs.

It goes without saying that any self-help book, no matter how good, does not replace the care of a medical professional. If you have a serious or chronic condition, and you think that homeopathy can help, go see a qualified homeopathic practitioner.

This book is all about creating beautiful, dream-like images. When I first started it, I was annoyed by the shifts between first and third persons. When I returned to it I was in a quiet place at a quiet time. I was able to focus uninterruptedly upon the language and images. It was then that the full force of the book revealed itself. If you stand back and evaluate the plot alone it seems implausible and a little silly. But within the dream world Mendelsohn creates Amelia's thoughts are enlightening. When I finished it I turned back to page one and began reading it out loud. It was as if I experienced rather than read this story.

This is not the greatest novel ever written, nor does it ever pretend to be. However, it has been one of the very few contemporary stories that flirts with originality and exploits imagination.

I read this book on a long, long direct flight from New York to Tokyo a few months ago. Perhaps the way I read this book had alot to do with its impact on me. Had I read it on the ground I would have surely perceived it differently. I have always loved airplanes, I have always been in love with something and I have always, always (don't quite know why or how) been fascinated by the disappearance of this remarkable woman.

So take it on your next long flight. Pick a window seat and enjoy it. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in aviation, the vagueries of love and Amelia Earhart. I do not really see it as a novel, but it very well may be a profoundly eloquent, lengthy and enduring poem. One of the best in my recent memory.

Although the story in this book was rather cliched and non-original I still thoroughly enjoyed the book. I read it on the beach which, I believe, is the perfect setting in which to read it. I felt like I was on the island with Amelia. The writing was absoloutely phenomonal. It was very light, airy and conveyed in its vocabulary the fantasy that it was. A great, relaxing, short read for your next day at the beach...or on a deserted island...whichever comes first

I just finished reading this book and came on here to read some reviews to see if maybe someone got something I didn't...Well, I am glad I bought the book at the dollar store but I still want my dollar back..plus some money for the time I wasted reading it. I felt like I was reading a diary of a schizophrenic teenager...which would have been fine but the intro made it seem like it would be more than that...if the character wasn't constantly spewing lunacy throughout maybe I could have felt something for her...but I honestly was waiting for the part where she was hospitalized and put on meds and wakes up more aware and in touch with reality...I know some may want to say they seen this or that and you have to be truly "aware" to understand the metaphors,etc..(i.e. that society especially older women in society suck the life blood out of the young girls with envy and the desire to steal their youth by recapturing their own.) That would have been okay but the book was an overdose of metaphors...it could have been good if the author tried less to impress and more time telling the story without using the "butterflies" to tell it for her.
I have heard that one of the Beatles hits..Lucy in the sky with diamonds is actually refering to a trip on LSD! Could that be the case here..but in reverse? Writing while on a trip? I mean used tampons in place of tea bags Sorry but this authors attempt to be an offspring of Stephen King..is a joke. If you are looking for a good psychological thriller stick to Stephen King..if you are interested in novels with stories about what teenage girls feel and think..read Judy Blume. ..."it isn't what is real but what is true"..don't waste your time or money..you will be greatly disappointed...and that is the real truth!

This book is one of the worst that I've ever read in life. It doesn't have any person that you want to learn more about, in fact, by the end of this novel, you'll be glad Beckett finally shut-up. The novel seems to be writen in some horrible attempt at poetry at points and lacks a plot. In fact, it is not until near the end of the novel do we learn anything about the storyline. For a book that seemed to gain praise from many, it makes me sad that the trees, that were used to make this book died in vien. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this book. I'm just glad I only paid a doller for it.

As a fan of the author's first, widely (mis-)read book, I was so looking forward to her next effort, hoping she would take her lyrical imagination and gifts for lucid prose to new heights. I have never been more shocked. Rather than soaring even higher than Amelia, this book plumbs a kind of literary depth that you won't often find outside Dante. If Amelia was a dream, this one's a nightmare. If Stephen King and Virginia Woolf mated, the result would be this wild, wonderful, brilliant book.

I admit, I was put off by some of the negative reviews (oh me of little faith) that the back-biting, presumably jealous journalism types have doled out to this dark little gem, but what gets me is that no one seems to be reading the book on its own terms - as allegory - as fable - as metaphor. Beckett herself (the narrator, a wonderful, sassy, smart girl, and how glad I am that my own girls will grow up with such a heroine, as I did with Holden Caulfield) tells us, again and again - it doesn't matter if something is real. What matters is if it's true. Well this book is like a brace of cold truth on all of our faces - about youth, about the culture, about the country - and it's also as entertaining as can be. Bravo, Mendelsohn! You've done it again....and once again, the people seem to be missing it (although I've actually read quite a few great reviews around the country on line - maybe the New Yorkers are simply too jealous of your first book's success to know how to read this book for the allegory it is - but that doesn't excuse my fellow Amazonians, who usually read with such distinction....)

Before writing this, I went back and reread my own review of I Was Amelia Earhart, and everything I said there is even truer of Inocence: Mendelsohn's writing remains positively entrancing, "a compelling hybrid of Hemingway, Garcia Marquez, and Virgina Woolf." And as with Amelia, I'm suprised by how few "picked up on the book's exquisite irony, its dry wit, its utterly deadpan sense of humor." My final comment may need some amending: I wrote that "I have a feeling that her next book will more clearly establish Mendelsohn for what she is -- the writer of her generation." Well, Innocence definitely confirms that in my mind, but if the reviewers, professional and otherwise, continue their campaign of idiocy, we may have to wait for her next book for the rest of the country to catch up with the plain unvarnished truth: she's the best we have, a heavyweight like very few others writing today.