I was enthralled by the description on the back cover of this book. But, I made it to about page 100 and gave up. The writing is laborious to say the least. Pretentious may be a better word. I found that I was skipping pages, looking for some dialogue in quotation marks in the hope that it would move the story along. Finally I decided all I needed to know I had read on the back cover, and I wasn't going to waste any more time on this book. This novel has been compared to Don Quixote and I am struggling to finish it much like I did with DQ in antiquated Spanish. In the manner of Cervantes, Marias has crafted a story that takes place largely in the imagination of his protagonista. I prefer to read stories where more of the action takes place externally and where the psychological or social or philosophical observations of the characters are sprinkled throughout the work rather than dominating it. Maybe I should have tried reading it in Spanish.
This book drags on a lot, but it's cozy in the way that Proust is cozy, and I miss it already :-(
—Swati
Not so much a novel as a series of essays on life, death and so forth.
—Anja
Life is too short to waste finishing this book.
—imjustme
