The story begins with every single person alive being simultaneously imbued with the memories, feelings and emotion of another person. Permanently paired with another person. Children are paired with adults, men with women, killer with pacifist without rhyme or reason. The book itself is less a contiguous story so much as it follows the hours and days after the event with several individuals. How they deal or avoid dealing with what they have gained is different for each. You might even call it a story made up of several character studies, each with its own conflict and resolution. I found the individual stories to be very interesting. What the characters chose to do with the new knowledge was equally interesting. […]