Fiction book reviews and critiques
Ignatius J. Reilly He is a universal character, in literature and in his sad reflection of real life. The moment comes when every enlightened man discovers that the world is full of fools. In that harsh moment of astonishing certainty, the best thing to do is to withdraw into yourself and enjoy some good sausages.
You can now buy The Plot of Fools, the great novel by John Kennedy Toole, here:
We are all a little Gregory samsa when, upon waking, we spend a few seconds doubting everything around us. The difference between the strange case of Gregorio Samsa and our morning awakenings is that he has finally been able to access the ultimate reality.
You can now buy The Metamorphosis, Kafka's masterpiece, here:
The particular moments or existence in general. Try to achieve dreams or immerse yourself in the magic of the moment. Impossible balances of the mere fact of being. You will never find a novel with philosophical overtones that allows you to access the most sophisticated ideas so lightly, those that plan around the existence of our feelings and our world as an almost inseparable perception.
You can now buy The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the great novel by Milan Kundera, here:
The starting point of this book is a situation that seems extremely disturbing for all of us who are parents and who meet in the shopping centers spaces where to free our little ones while we browse a shop window.
In that blink in which you lose your sight in a suit, in some fashion accessories, in your long-awaited new television, you suddenly discover that your son is no longer where you saw him in the previous second. The alarm goes off immediately in your brain, the psychosis announces its intense irruption. Children appear, always appear.
But sometimes they don't. Seconds and minutes pass, you walk the bright corridors wrapped in a feeling of unreality. You notice how people watch you move restlessly. You ask for help but no one has seen your little one.
I'm not a monster reaches that fatal moment where you know something has happened, and it doesn't seem like anything good. The plot advances frantically in search of the lost child. The Inspector Ana Arén, aided by a journalist, immediately associates the disappearance with another case, that of Slenderman, the elusive kidnapper of another child.
Anxiety is the predominant sensation of a detective novel with that absolutely dramatic tinge that is assumed in the loss of a child. An almost journalistic treatment of the plot helps in this sensation, as if the reader could share the exclusives of the pages of events where the story is going to unfold.
You can now buy I'm not a monster, the latest novel by Carme Chaparro, here:
Strange times those of the Spanish transition. The perfect setting to present the strange family nucleus of Ángel. The young man moves between the frustration of a father who bet everything on a dream and who is unable to escape failure. The need for a father figure, personified ...
Novel of novels. Probably the origin of all great novels (in terms of number of pages). A plot that moves between the shadows of a conventual life. Where man is deprived of his creative facet, where the spirit is reduced to a kind of slogan like "ora et labora", only evil and the destructive part of the being can emerge to take over the reins of the soul.
You can now buy The Name of the Rose, the wonderful novel by Umberto Eco, here:
Dishonor, unwritten law, pacts of silence, reckoning, and pain over the loss of a loved one. Everyone knows but no one denounces. Only by word of mouth, for those who want to listen, the truth is told from time to time. Everyone knew that Santiago Nasar was going to die, except for Santiago himself, who is unaware of the mortal sin he committed in the eyes of others.
You can now buy Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the unique short novel by Gabriel García Márquez, here:
In his work Soldiers of SalamisJavier Cercas makes it clear that beyond the winning faction, there are always losers on both sides of any contest.
In a Civil War there can be the paradox of losing family members positioned in those conflicting ideals that embrace the flag as a cruel contradiction.
Thus, the determination of the ultimate victors, those who manage to hold the flag in front of everything and everyone, those who raise heroic values transmitted to the people as epic stories ends up hiding deep personal and moral miseries.
Manuel Mena he is the introductory character rather than the protagonist of this novel, the link with his predecessor Soldados de Salamina. You begin to read thinking of discovering his personal history, but the details of the skills of the young military man, absolutely rigorous with what happened at the front, fade to give way to a choral stage where incomprehension and pain spread, the suffering of those who understand the flag and the country as the skin and blood of those young people, almost children who shoot each other with the fury of the adopted ideal.
You can now buy The monarch of the shadows, the latest novel by Javier Cercas, here:
No other life story like Edmond Dantès. If you embark on how the Count of Monte Cristo came to be such, you will experience betrayal and heartbreak, loneliness, tragedy… circumstances that could bring down anyone. But Edmond ruminates on a plan in his hatred and the winds of luck are blowing in his favor ...
You can now buy The Count of Monte Cristo, the essential novel by Alexander Dumas, in various versions and adaptations, here:
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The title already captures the sensation of fatal premonition that governs this crime novel. Fate conspires to attract and intertwine the broken souls of characters who share gloomy pasts and gloomy existences. The characters are very different in the real plane, the one that focuses on the ...
Novel at various times to introduce us to the evolution of a peculiar American dream, in the style of the movie American Beauty but with a deeper, blacker and extended plot in time. We started by getting to know the Goldman from Baltimore and the Goldman from Montclair families. The Baltimore have prospered more ...
It's been several years since I read "The Fall of the Giants", the first part of the trilogy "The Century", by Ken Follet. So when I decided to read this second part: "The Winter of the World", I thought it would be difficult for me to relocate so many characters (you know that the good ...