My rating: 3/5
Book review:
Now that's a puzzling title, who almost screams: "Marketing plans!", because there is no story with such title in this collection. There is one story with the idea, yes, but the title is less shocking and more evocative - Revenge. I've learnt my lesson, in that I'll be suspicious of books with flashy titles from now on.
The title of another translation of her stories is even flashier: There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself. C'mon!
My rating: 5 out of 5
Book review:
At the end of a lot of struggling days and a 70-pages document with new words, I've managed to finish my first novel read in Spanish. As I feel like I've earned a prize, I have to thank Linda and Dolors for their support!
I'm not sure I've chosen the right novel to begin with. Apart from my poor understanding of language, the plot was bringing more confusion than I could deal with. I felt utterly frustrated at times because I wanted to read quicker and understand what was going on. But then, the slow pace made me taste mouthfuls of the wonderful sound of Spanish. Man oh man, this language is musicality itself! In the right hands, it breaths poetry through every word. And Juan Rulfo has the magic hands, this can't be denied.
My rating: 4/5
The Obscene Bird of Night is one strange, twisted, haunting, obscene book. It may well be the most difficult novel I've read so far. There were moments when I felt that I could connect to it and even understand it, but most of the time I felt like floating inside a grotesque nightmare, with walled-up windows and doors, not being able to find my way out. If, by chance, I was brusquely expelled into reality, I was compelled by an utter fascination to go back in and have my brains turned to mush.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Book review:
Edit (104 days later): Despite my initial 3 star rating, I feel compelled to give this book another star. I must admit that Ice is still haunting me, as some of the powerful images it aroused are still vivid in my mind. Few books have this power over me.
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While I found Ice to be an interesting read, with moments of pure beauty and originality, in the end I was glad it was over, because it had failed to keep me under its spell for its entirety. While being a short book, to me it seemed awfully long, possibly because it is repetitive on the verge of becoming annoying. The magic that worked its charm in the beginning started to lose its power when the same things happened again and again, when I got tired of the uncertainty and wanted to tell the difference between what was real and what was not. And I do love tangled, fantastic tales (Mulholland Drive is one of my all-time favorite movies).
At first, I was mesmerized by the strange story of a man set out in search of a fragile girl with white hair, in a menacing landscape that is gradually overtaken by ice. His quest becomes an obsession and he follows her to some disaster-stricken places, but she always seems to sleep through his fingers. His search is impeded by a third character, the Ward, who seems to have taken possession of the girl, but also by the fact that the girl herself does not want to be found and rescued by the man.
Ice has no actual plot and no reliable storyteller. It's like falling through a series of weird dreams, not being able to tell the difference between reality and unconsciousness. The nameless narrator has some recurrent daydreams about the girl he is chasing, some of which left a powerful impression upon me, and for that alone it was worth reading this story.
My rating: 5 out of 5
Book review:
I wonder why so few people have read this novel, because it's quite amazing. I can't say that it's completely original, because it reminded me of Kafka (The Castle) and Saramago (All the Names), but imagining an institution where people's dreams are analyzed... That is a brilliant idea, masterfully developed by Ismail Kadaré.
Mark-Alem comes from a powerful Albanian family, the Quiprili (Köprülü), and his relatives decide that he should apply for a job at one of the most influential institutions of the Ottoman Empire - Tabir Saray, the Palace of Dreams. Thus he begins his ascent to the top, although fearful and confused, never fully aware of what he is supposed to do. In this huge machinery of control, the dreams from all over the empire are gathered, sorted and analysed, in order to choose one Master Dream that is presented each Friday to the Sultan. Dreams are believed to foretell important political events, thus being of utmost importance to the Empire.
We follow Mark-Alem's journey through the mysterious Palace of Dreams, with its nightmarish passages where he usually gets lost, with the thousands of dreams stacked away in its huge underground archive, with the kafkian beaurocracy and the strange happenings that make people paranoid. Without realising, Mark-Alem becomes an active part in the events that will unfold in the story, bringing misfortune to his family.
Absorbed in the world of dreams, Mark-Alem comes to believe that this is the real world, powerful and vivid, while the reality outside gradually becomes gray, dull and less and less attractive. He gets more and more isolated, his relatives remaining his only connection to the earthly world. He seems oblivious to any romantic relationship and the only mention of a possible wife comes from his uncles, but we don't ever get to know the girl. The lack of a sexual dimension makes the character a bit too flat, but contributes to his total immersion in the fantastic world of dreams, a sort of hell that Ismail Kadaré wanted to create in his novel.
My rating: 5 out of 5
Book review:
Here's an Icelandic writer of which I've heard nothing about, despite the fact that he won the Nobel prize for literature. I found the book by chance, the synopsis sounded interesting enough, so I began reading and... helplessly fell in love with the novel.
This is Halldór Laxness' only book translated into Romanian, but I'm anxious to read some of his other works, especially Independent People.
Under the Glacier is truly an amazing book, which made me laugh (or at least giggle), think and wonder. It is a delightful blend of fantasy and reality which immerses the reader in a mysterious, yet earthly dimension. Even now, when I think of it, the magical world of the parish by the glacier is still vivid in my mind and prolongs its fascination upon me.
The way the dialogues are presented is a little bit strange: instead of the usual lines, there are the names of the interlocutors. It was a bit distressing at first, but this annoying fact was gradually forgotten since the dialogue became absurd anyway, yet so savory and funny that I could no longer find it the least fault.
The writing is full of humor (I found myself laughing many times) and the absurd situations that emerge are extremely delicious. The blending of reality with fantasy is in the perfect dose for me - at the end I was left in a state of reverie, wondering how much of what had happened was real. Some facts are confirmed, others are left unexplained, but this doesn't diminish the magic atmosphere of this forgotten place at the end of the world, governed by the glacier and the sea birds and populated by a bunch of more or less bizarre people.
Iceland through the lens of photographer Ragnar Axelsson
The old man may well be the priest from the parish near the glacier (photographer: Ragnar Axelsson)
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