In 2016, one year after its Pulitzer prize award, I bought All The Light We Cannot See in a local book market. I returned home that day, excited, ready to revel in this esteemed work of literature. Yet after the first few chapters, something was off. The writing felt foreign; unreadable. Sentences didn’t make sense in my head. I stopped and started the book many times over those weeks, but never got beyond the first 20 pages. The book evidently wasn’t for me.

This week, seven years on, I started the book again and it now clicks into place. The writing is elegant in its subtlety, something I can now appreciate. Characters have life now; the plot thread is apparent. I am now 100 pages in and consumed in some psychedelic high. It may very well be my top book this year.

The book, seven years ago, is the same book as the one today. The only difference is in how I have received it. It was not the right time for me to receive the book then. The perfect time is now.