Saturday 12 March 2011

Never Let me go – Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro was a very nice surprise.
I’ve had never heard anything from this writer until my girlfriend gave me this book. It’s a page-turner once you get into the story, you can’t stop reading!
It starts almost as a Harry Potter without the sorcery, but once you understand that something’s wrong with the students of that school, you start wanting to understand what it is.
Ishiguro then gives us, what you could describe as a science’s fiction novel, but without the spaceships and the lasers.  It’s just for the story to make sense and let’s face it, it’s not that important.
What Ishiguro gives us that is important is a love trio and a magnificent story that lets out a few very pertinent questions for us to think about in the end.
Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the book, but what I’ve enjoyed even more was the time after the book when I read the last word, that’s when I’ve enjoyed the book the most. So many questions for us to think about;
What are the boundaries of our lives?
What are we willing to accept, willing to bear in exchange of our comfort?
How much are we willing to ask, how much do we want to know, after understanding that knowledge can be painful?
In the end a very very good book and a great surprise.
Ishiguro has a new reader, me!

Friday 29 January 2010

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway


For Whom the Bell Tolls was the first novel I’ve read by Hemingway. Before that I’ve only read short-stories from him. I have to say that I didn’t like much the short-stories, they wore too much descriptive for me and this novel continues with that way of writing. So when I started to read this book I was expecting something in the same tone and waiting for the same sense of boredom that the short-stories gave me.

I was completely mistaken, although the book isn’t written in my favourite style, it is one hell of a book. The way Hemingway is able to place the reader in the Spanish mountains, the way he makes us understand the Spanish Civil War, by telling us the story of one attack, of one “guerilla” group, is simply amazing. I have to say, that I was expecting an even bigger disappointment because one of the worst books I’ve ever read was exactly about the Spanish Civil War and also written with the action taking place on the side fighting for the republic (Killing a Mouse on Sunday – Emeric Pressburger) but I was expecting the wrong thing.

Hemingway is able to tell us about the love of a group for a cause, a cause that units them and allows them to fight and die for it. He is able to tell us one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever read, between Robert Jordan, the main character and Maria, a lost soul of the war. He is able to tell us about Pablo that is weak in mind but strong in heart, he’s able to tell us about so many people, all of them different, all of them fighting for different reasons, but all united and willing to die for the idea of freedom... even if that idea takes different shapes inside everyone’s head.

They are all fighting to be free... as should we all.

In the overall this book was a very positive surprise and I’m looking forward to read more of Hemingway’s work.

Monday 26 January 2009

The Namesake



Jhumpa Lahiri is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for her first book (Interpreter of Maladies, witch by the way I also think is brilliant). Afterwards she wrote The Namesake (which actually began as a short story).

The Namesake is a novel about a son of immigrants from Calcutta born in Massachusetts that is named after the famous writer Gogol (His father favourite author). It’s a fabulous book written in very “fluid” English, it loses all the flamboyance that some “newish” writers try to impose us, and focus on the story, on the details of Gogol’s life. Each chapter is a short story, with a different goal and a different set of personages, but always evolving around Gogol (Even in the first ones, that tell us the story before his birth, his parents’ marriage, his father’s love for Gogol, the moving to the US) telling us how he feels living with that particular name, how he feels having such different parents from all his colleagues, how he sometimes even feels marginalized. But it also tells us about his best moments, his achievements, his “joys”... telling us how he has lived the first three and a half decades of his life.

In the overall the book is fantastic; I really think it’s one of the best books I’ve read in the last year or so and I hope this young writer will presents us with more novels.

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones





A young girl in a forgotten island where war has installed itself.

This is the starting point for a brilliant story written by Lloyd Jones.

Matilda’s the young girl that narrates the whole story, with the help of her unexpected teacher she strolls through the XIX century England, using as a guide the novel of Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations”.

This book tells us about courage, friendship and loyalty, it also points out the enormous atrocities that the human being is able to do, and it reminds us all that even though you can’t live through books, you can always find shelter in them, a place to hide when reality is so awful that either you escape it, or you lose yourself.

But the true aspect of the book, the one in which Matilda will find herself thinking constantly is the ability of a person to be himself, not the one that everybody pressures us to be, but to be true to our feelings and opinions and to stand by them, even if it means that by doing that we will be against everybody else.

I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

A recommended reading for all of those that, like me, think a book is more than just a story, a book can be a friend. And I bet that in the end you’ll be friends of Matilda… and of that mysterious character called Mr. Pip.