Castle in the Pyrenees- Jostein Gaarder

I haven't been able to find much books by him in Singapore. Loved Sophie's World and Solitaire Mystery. Fascinating read if you like philosophy. I wanted very much to review this book as it touched on some of the things I'm interested in. For instance, the big bang, and how we are all, interconnected in some ways. We are made of the same material that started this world- stardust. Like many other people in the world., it questioned the existence of one earth, which I feel is rather improbable, given the number of galaxies and planets and stars in existence. How could it be out of the billions of stars/planets out there, only one planet in one galaxy had the right conditions to create life? The probability is 1/100,000,000? Imagine that?! There are two main characters in the book, one (Solrunn) who believes in the spiritual world, and the other, a professor (Steinn), who believes only in science. I am not a deeply spiritual person but neither do I believe that only science is able to explain things. And just because you can't prove something now, doesn't mean that something doesn't exist; it could mean that you just havent found what you are looking for. Anyway both Solrunn and Steinn believed that they had killed an old lady while they were travelling on a highway. However, the old lady appeared to them, making Solrunn believe that the lady was someone from the afterlife, while Steinn believed she was just a figment of their imagination. This split in their beliefs caused them to drift apart. They each later married someone else and had kids, and somehow reunited at the place where they had stayed in, before they killed the old lady. What was chilling at the end of the story was that Solrunn thought she heard the old lady say to her when she appeared to them,"I am what you will become", while Steinn heard the old lady say,"you ought to get a speeding ticket, young lad". And strangely, Solrunn did end up being like the old lady. She wore a pink shawl that the old lady was wearing at the time of her death and was later, killed in an accident on her way to meeting Steinn. In essence, yes, she did become the old lady. Could it have been a vision of herself in the future? Had she somehow managed to glimpse her own destiny? This is an intriguing read although Sophie's World is still better.