What is belief? Can simply believing a story make it in some sense true? Is believing in love fundamentally different than believing in God? In fellow humans? Are people and animals different in their essential needs? In their desires? Are zoos morally defensible? Can one be a true, faithful adherent to multiple religions? These are some of the questions that get tossed around in this fable.

Two quotes seem best to summarize what was for me the most enchanting theme of this book: Some people "lack imagination and miss the better story." And second: "If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for?"

This is one of the best books I've read in ages because it deals with one of my favorite obsessions — the nature of belief — without being at all preachy about it.

Is it a story good enough to make you belief in God, as the old man in the opening pages of the book claims? I'm not sure. Part of me says, "Oh, come on. It's just a novel. An invention. A story."

And yet to hold firmly to that very reasonable notion is not to have really read and understood the book at all.