You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

Hello everyone! It’s been over a year since this blog has been updated. I thought I’d post something new since I actually finished one book this summer. The one book I got to read was You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem, which I bought only because I loved the other Lethem books I got to read. As She Climbed Across the Table was one of the most bittersweet stories I’ve read (okay, it’s about a professor who’s in love with a girl who’s in love with a gaping void), and Motherless Brooklyn had great noir-inspired language.

But You Don’t Love Me Yet, frankly, was horrible. The book is about a girl, named Lucinda, who plays the bass guitar in an unnamed rock band in which her ex-boyfriend is the lead singer. During the day she works in a performance art project that her other ex-boyfriend set up, where she takes anonymous calls from people who complain about anything and everything. She falls in love with one of the regular callers (“the Complainer”), eventually meets him, and everything for her goes to hell after that.

Arguably, the most important thing about writing a story from one character’s eyes is that the reader must be able to like or at least identify with the character. My biggest problem with this book was that Lucinda was downright unlikeable. There was absolutely nothing in the way of characterization, except it seemed like she just had the propensity to be fickle and sleep around, which would be alright except it seemed like Lucinda had no reasons at all to do so. I’m guessing Lethem meant to paint her as a mysterious, flighty, lovely girl, but eventually Lucinda gets demystified and turns into a downright silly person.

Lethem also took on a rambling tone that wasn’t consistent in the least. Plus, the long passages about the band’s music were not well-executed at all, nor was the plot interesting. By the time I finished the book, I knew I just wanted to get it over with.

The only redeeming qualities of the book were the few phone-call musings of the Complainer before Lucinda gets to meet him, and the fact that the character of Matthew, the lead singer of the band, was still kept mysterious and a little dark by the time the book was finished. But it still wasn’t enough to justify the money that I spent on the book.

I suggest you stay away from this and find another Lethem book to read. Any of them, actually, would be miles better than this one.

On ‘Literary Rock Stardom’

Greetings, salutations, & all that jazz! It is I, Paolo Cruz, a.k.a. Ipis Dei, intrepid pop culture writer, doing my litte part to keep this fine blog active.

Today, i’d like to discuss the nebulous concept of so-called Literary Rock Stars.

CASE IN POINT #1: In July this year, retail chain Power Books flew in humor essayist David Sedaris for the “Talk Pretty in Manila” tour. They promoted his series of appearances with an in-store banner that prominently featured a quote from the New York Times, declaring him “the closest thing the literary world has to a rock star” (or something to that effect).

CASE IN POINT #2: In the same month, during the awards night for the 1st Philippine Graphic/Fiction Contest, production group Furball created a cute video, recapping Neil Gaiman’s involvement with the contest. The AVP presents him (with tongue firmly in cheek) as black-clad, scruffy-haired rocker, performing in front of crowd of screaming fans.

CASE IN POINT #3: Publisher A.A. Knopf built a special webpage, dedicated to eclectic Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. Blogger Ramon de Veyra described the site’s content as “author as rockstar”. This quote was picked up for an official BlogAd used to publicize the site.

Now, I understand that part of this is necessary marketing to hook in potential readers. It implies a cult following; a dedicated readership prepared to endure the routine hassles of queues, and bad weather, and vague number-stub ticketing systems to bear witness to their author-idol. But I also wonder if the “literary rock star” category has a limit to its effectiveness, as a reliable descriptor.

The Name of the Rose

A few months ago, the company I work for had a beta-launch for this new social networking website. Every employee was required to sign up, and soon enough, everyone was busy making testimonials for everyone else. I suspect our office took a productivity hit during that period.

Anyway, my friend and then-officemate Wanggo, who would hopefully be contributing to this space soon, was getting tired of making witty write-ups for everyone, so he proceeded to give the rest of us one-word testimonials. When I opened mine up, it read, Erudite.

At the time, I had no idea what the word meant, so it was only when I looked the word up in the dictionary did the irony of what just happened dawn on me.

It was a good thing then that I already knew what the word meant when I picked up I read The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco's international bestseller. Erudite is the perfect word to describe the book.

(A friend described another Eco book, Foucault's Pendulum, a "cerebral Dan Brown," which is probably fair, if you add, "Yeah, like a million times more.")

I suspect that Rose is one of those books that are read far fewer times than they are claimed to have been. To summarize quickly, it is a philosophical detective story set in an Italian monastery in the middle ages.

Now read that sentence again, and think about how ridiculous that sounds.

But Eco surprisingly pulls it off. Sure, there are parts that are hard to digest, but there are moments when I can't put the novel down. The book is a showcase not just for Eco's brilliant philosophical mind, but his remarkable ability to do an exciting facsimile of an Arthur Conan Doyle plot.

Postscript: I wasn't aware that there was a film based on the book as I was reading it, but all the while, I was imagining William as a Sean Connery-type. I wasn't that surprised when I found out that Connery did play him in the movie.

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

Two critics have dubbed this novel the perfect thing to read at the beach. Before delving into the story, however, I would just like to ask: What qualities must a book possess to be considered “beach material?” I once brought Kostova’s The Historian to the beach and it wasn’t a very good decision because, however average that novel turned out to be, I ended up stealing into our hotel room every chance I could get because I was afraid of being chased by vampires. That being said, here is what I think beach reading should be like:

1. Not too absorbing because if you can’t put a book down, then you shouldn’t have gone to the beach in the first place. It isn’t to say, however, that beach reading should be dull. Hopefully you know what I mean.  
2. Easy in the sense that you can take it up again and again and be able to pick up the pace from where you left off, in between distractions.
3. If possible, it must contain a fair amount of references to food and drink, in order to whet one’s appetite, which makes #2 very important.

(Off the top of my head: Fitzgerald, Fforde, Murdoch, Winterson… feel free to add to it)

So. Notes on a Scandal.

Set in London, we meet Barbara Covett, a single and newly-retired schoolteacher of favorable repute who takes friendship very seriously. Having previously been burned by a friend who thought she was too clingy, Barbara has spent the latter half of her teaching career shunning co-workers she thought were too beneath her. In between her job and her life at home (with nobody but a cat to keep her company), she thrived on scheduled trips to the grocery and other errands. When Bathsheba Hart came to St. George’s to teach pottery, it became Barbara’s mission to take her in and, what with her gauzy outfits and problematic children ensconced in a huge house, Sheba exuded a tragic glamour that Barbara wanted in on.

The novel is about Barbara’s chronicling Sheba’s affair with a student, the news of which turns her into an object of national scandal. Barbara shows an obsessive (to the point of being manipulative), detailing of the rise and decline of the illicit “romance,” and her efforts to protect Sheba by moving in with her, making sure she’s bathed and fed, etc. As one reads further, it is Barbara who dominates the novel, over and above the sexual encounters between Sheba and her student. Sheba’s downfall is Barbara’s triumph – her gaining not a friend but someone utterly dependent on her, something she welcomes all too eagerly.

I enjoyed the book for a number of reasons, the first of which is Barbara’s character. Initially pitiful, she turns out to be the stronger figure in the end, however evil. She reminds me of Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s Misery: consumed with good intentions but on a psychotic level. Even the language used in the novel is very characteristic of Barbara – smart and biting. Particularly memorable to me is the part where Barbara goes to Sheba’s house for the first time. She chooses her outfit meticulously and even buys new shoes for the occasion but it ends embarrassingly, with her foot bleeding amidst Sheba’s amusement and Polly’s (Sheba’s daughter) disgust.

As mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the language in which Heller wrote the novel. It is full of little tirades on relationships, youth and sexuality. In this passage, she scoffs at “regular” females:

In my experience, newcomers – particularly female ones – are far too eager to pin their colours to the mast of any staffroom coterie that will have them …

She scoffs at house décor:

Hanging on the wall were several paintings – the sort of gimmicky modern abstracts that aren’t my cup of tea – and a primitive wooden instrument, possibly African, which looked as if it might be rather smelly if one got too close to it. The bookshelves housed a decent but not very inspired collection of fiction, suggesting the strong influence of newspaper “Books of the Year” lists. You could tell there weren’t any real literature lovers in the family. The mantelpiece was a gathering point for household flotsam. A child’s drawing. A hunk of pink Play-Doh. A passport. One elderly banana.

Notes on a Scandal is an unassuming but strangely charming novel. I was a bit skeptical at first because it just came with a three-piece set and truth be told, I would never have cast a second glance at it if I saw it at the bookstore, not even if I saw that it was shortlisted by the Man Booker Prize 2003 (which it was). I’m glad I was wrong.

So, is it perfect beach reading material? You bet.

Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham

The most potent incidences of beauty were the ones that felt like personal discoveries, that seemed to have been meant specifically for you, as if some vast intelligence had singled you out and wanted to show you something. - Specimen Days

If one is going to talk about Specimen Days, one is going to have to talk about the city, any city. Cities are generally thought to be places where people make something of themselves. It is not uncommon for people from rural places to relocate to cities for the promise of financial stability, however little. A city represents power; in the form of money, high-rise buildings, factories, various modes of transportation … even the smog may be associated with power. However much people are attracted to an urban setting, though, there are some who find it unbearably constraining and cannot wait to leave. In Michael Cunningham’s (of The Hours’ fame) latest, the characters all want out.

Set in New York, Specimen Days is divided into three parts, all of which talk about the same city but at different periods. The first part is New York at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Lucas, thirteen years old, is forced to grow up and stop school not only because of poverty but because Simon, his older brother, was killed operating a machine that manufactures spare parts. The factory then agrees to hire Lucas to take Simon’s place, a gesture that can be attributed more to employee shortage than compassion. As a result, the burden of finding food and caring for his sick parents is hoisted onto Lucas’ bony shoulders. At work, he discovers that machines, whether they are music boxes or sewing machines, have the uncanny desire and eventual power to suck their owners into themselves – they contain the dead. He hears Simon’s voice just behind his machine’s hypnotic creaking, and, the more he takes up his position behind its cogs and wheels, the more he feels the need to escape, though not alone. As befits a hero (and Lucas is a hero), there is someone to save; Catherine, Simon’s ex-fiancée, who Lucas believes is his only love and responsibility.

The second part of the novel shows present-day New York, where terrorist threats and racial issues are fairly commonplace. Cat Martin is a highly educated, middle-aged police officer, in charge of taking calls from, in her words, the “regular nuts” who announce that they are bombing a certain place or killing a certain person because of a wide variety of (often ridiculous) reasons. However, one of her callers, a little boy, actually followed through. He had a homemade bomb strapped to his chest, and, walking up to a stranger, hugged him, thereby detonating the bomb and killing both of them. The incident was a slap to Cat’s face because she had brushed that call aside, thinking it was not of any importance. Guilt-ridden, she received a call from another child several days later, asking if she had spoken to his “brother” and not divulging any information other than the fact that he wasn’t supposed to call and shouldn’t have. Despite their being able to trace the call, a second bomb went off by Central Park with the same details – crude bomb strapped to the chest and detonation by hugging a random passerby. Cat, who has not gotten over the recent death of her son and her failed marriage, is barely able to handle the physical and emotional strain of the recent happenings. Her boyfriend, perfect and dependable Simon, is now insufficient for the life she realizes she needs, which is to be away from the city that is gradually turning into a monstrosity.

The third and final part of Specimen Days is the New York of the future, where the city itself is a novelty and a thing of the past. Central Park is converted into a theme park, where foreigners pay to be harassed, mugged, etc., to get the complete New York experience, so to speak. Simon is a simulo – a robot endowed with almost all the human characteristics – and works as one of the park’s attractions. An unexplainable urge pushes Simon to desert his job and go to Denver to, again with the cliché, meet his maker along with a Nadian named Catareen, a creature with green skin and flame-colored eyes. Other than the mysterious pull, Simon has a lot of questions for the person who created him, the most pressing of which is why he feels that he is always “on the brink of something” and yet not getting there. For instance, he thinks he comprehends beauty and then discovers that it is merely a crude impression. Midway through their journey, they run into a child named Luke who prefers to join them rather than stay with a religious cult he had somehow ensnared himself with. This unlikely trio – a robot, an alien and a precocious child – sticks together through hunger, possible arrests and contaminated lake water, in the abstract hope that they find what it is they are looking for be it family, courage or love.

Aside from the city and the permutations of names, what binds Specimen Days together is the literal and underlying presence of Walt Whitman. The novel is named after one of Whitman's works, after all. Lucas, in the first part of the book, speaks in intermittent bursts of poetry, fits that are beyond his control. Leaves of Grass is his Bible, from which he reads a passage every night and recites as fittingly as a clairvoyant would. The child-bombers from the second part get their inspiration from Whitman’s principles and grew up in a house filled wall-to-wall with pages from his poetry. Finally, Simon the simulo is embedded with a Whitman poetry chip and cannot control his outbursts as well.

Specimen Days is beautifully and impeccably written. Cunningham’s language is haunting and although it seems odd that the book is romance, history and sci-fi all at the same time, it is seamless and requires so much effort to put down. It is definitely up to par with the Pulitzer Prize winning The Hours, and even more imaginative. There are a lot of wonderful books about poetry but those like Specimen Days are rare, in that they already are poetry. I cannot recommend this enough.

Amsterdam

I picked up a copy of the Booker-prize winning Amsterdam by Ian McEwan knowing very little about the book or the author. Because of this, I wasn't prepared for the novel's killer blend of wicked dark humour and surgically-precise psychological protraits. The most amazing thing was all of it was packed into 208 pages of delightful reading.

The story opens at the funeral of the lovely Molly Lane, one-time mistress to both longtime friends Clive, an influential classical composers, and Vernon, editor-in-chief of one of the country's leading dailies. Also at the funeral was another of Molly's former lovers, right-wing politician Julian Garmony, as well as Molly's husband, the rich publisher George Lane, for both of whom the friends held great contempt.

The nature of Molly's death affects the friends greatly; they had known her for a long time as a happy-go-lucky girl. The mystery disease that struck her had, according to rumors, turned her into a vegetable. Soon after, Clive and Vernon agree on a pact to kill each other if either of them contract such a disease.

The rest of the story revolves around the four men, as their worlds becomes entangled far more complexly than when Molly was alive. Clive and Vernon's friendship slowly falls apart with feelings of resentment and jealousy, as George produces photographs taken by Molly featuring Julian in compromising positions, and offers them to Vernon for publication.

While deep into the book, I kept thinking to myself how "macho" the whole novel read like, as McEwan shows off his amazing knowledge of the male psyche. Every bit of insecurity and pettiness is captured. There was even this brilliant stretch as he goes into the mind of his composer, documenting his creative process and pulling it off.

Some parts may have come off a bit contrived, and the ending was fairly obvious, but make no mistake about it. This book is a masterpiece, and Ian McEwan is the maestro tugging at the strings.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

I'm twenty, and I think I've lost the hang of reading fantasy children's literature. I plodded through Abarat last year and I'm stuck in the middle of its sequel. I read every Harry Potter book that comes out the moment our family gets a copy. But all the same, something just tells me that I'm not enjoying the novel the way I should. I feel like I'm reading something watered down, and my brain feels like it's moving through mush, slowly and not too surely. I chalked it up to age, and the fact that the experience of reading a novel changes drastically with adolescence and subsequent adulthood.

The moment I started Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, however, I knew it was going to be different. It took a lot of time to get into it, but after a couple of pages I realized I was reading this book the same way I used to read books when I was younger — as fast as I could, gobbling up each and every word because I was so excited with the plot and much too in love with the characters. Rather than taking my time to carefully read all the lines (and sometimes in between them), I found myself running instead of treading carefully, and occasionally tripping. I'd go back and reread parts that I had accidentally skipped over in my excitement.

The plot of this novel effects this kind of quick, excited feeling in the reader. The story is that of a young boy named Haroun, the son of a storyteller named Rashid who suddenly loses all will and motivation to come up with new stories for the crowds. At a politician's campaign, he suddenly loses his tongue and ends up croaking in front of thousands of people. Haroun wants to help his father, who is in danger of death at the hands of an angry politician. His quest takes him to the earth's second moon, to a land where half of the world is submerged in light and the rest in darkness, where he encounters mechanical birds, strange gardeners, water genies, and many more.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is an incredibly fast read. The plot travels at a lightning pace, with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter and exposition occuring at the mere snap of a finger. I finished this book within a couple of hours, and ended it just a few minutes before writing this review. On the one hand, while the plot realy is rather elaborate and quite "magical," the characters seem nothing more than strange and often irritating creatures. One is instantly reminded of the almost caricatural supporting characters found in Rushdie's other novels.

Yet while it is true that Rushdie may have sacrificed depth thanks to the length of his book, it's still something more than a meaningless fairytale. The slight but not too subtle political jabs could very well lead one to read the novel as being primarily about freedom of speech, or fact vs. fiction (ala The Life of Pi). All the same, doing so quickly erases the kind of breathless and enchanted feeling that can only be experienced when reading a fantasy novel as a child. And really, that's the most enjoyable kind of reading one can do.

Baseball season

The Major League Baseball season is set to open this week amidst steroid controversies, and quite serendipitously I read a couple of books about the baseball over the last month.

I am somewhat familiar with the game, especially back in college. I remember during my senior year, I would spend most of my mornings watching an MLB match on TV while I had a breakfast of leftovers and ice cream (those were the days). Then one semester, I even played baseball for PE (mostly because the class fit my schedule). My instructor was this weird Korean dude who spoke pretty fluent Tagalog, and my classmates were pretty good. I was terrible at it, but I got a good grade after writing a term paper about Ichiro (he was a rookie then) and other East Asians making it big in the Majors.

The first baseball book I read last month was Bernard Malamud's Pulitzer-prize winning work The Natural. Like most other people, I was more familiar with the Robert Redford movie about Roy Hobbs, the New York Knights' rookie sensation who dominates the majors at age 35.

In the book just like in the movie, Hobbs was a mythic baseball player, shattering records left and right (although, I must point out that Barry Bonds, the player in the middle of the steroids controversy, might have had seasons that were statistically as impressive).

However, the difference between the movie and the book becomes apparent early in the novel. While Redford's Hobbs was a superhero right out of the comic books, Malamud's was as flawed as he was powerful; he was a Herculean hero, following unbelievably great deeds with ones as unbelievably stupid.

That Malamud was able to transfer his hero's locale from the heights of Olympus to the diamonds of America is the book's true genius. His narrative of the season was nothing short of brilliant. For example, his descriptions of the rag-tag personalities in the clubhouse and the team's winning streaks were the literary equivalents of those funny montages in baseball films like Major League. It shows not only how good Malamud is, but also how little the game has changed. The book was originally published in 1952.

Hobbs's fate in the book is much more cruel than that in the film, and I wouldn't fault anyone for preferring the nice Hollywood ending. But anyone who is a fan of baseball and literature should at least give The Natural a read.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis was just as fascinating a read for me. Published in 2003, the book chronicles the success of the Oakland Athletics led by GM Billy Beane, who have found success in the American League despite much lower budgets than their competitors.

Beane achieved success by eschewing traditional baseball methods for evaluating talent, instead relying on statistical tools. Early in the book, he was discussing a prospect with his scouts, who weren't very high on the player because of his body type. Beane replied, succinctly, "We're not selling jeans here."

The book goes on to profile Beane, who was, as a young player, a prospect with whom scouts fell in love for his body type and athleticism, but who never quite panned out in the big leagues. Aside from Beane, the book also devotes some time to Oakland players, gems in the rough who were uncovered with the A's system.

The book also details the history of sabermetrics, the analysis of baseball using objective statistics, as well as the opposition to these methods that still exists among traditionalists in baseball today.

While I myself have my reservations about the analytical tool, I love the fact that some sort of tool is being employed by baseball, with its wealth of statistics to draw from. The revolution has started, and spread to other sports such as basketball as well. In fact, I am a fan of the basketball statistical analysis site 82games.com.

However, at the heart of the book is the biggest problem in baseball: the economic disparity between MLB teams. Oakland has a payroll around $40 million, while the Yankees have a budget of a little less than $200 million. While the A's have been successful this past decade, it is only a matter of time before the big boys beat up on the little kids again.

Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan (Book 11 in the Wheel of Time series)

Link to the book on Amazon

On TV, what usually differentiates a mini-series from a series is that a series keeps on going until the writers/sponsors/fans/cast members give up. It's only then when the writers come up with a neat way to tie things up and end the series. Until that happens, you usually get no closure.

Case in point, every Transformers episode ends with "You may have won the battle Prime, but you haven't won the war!". Queue Starscream screeching "Retreat!" and next scene would be a bad joke between Spike and Bumblebee. That is of course, until Transformers the movie, where Optimus Prime gets killed. (yes.. get over it.)

I started the Wheel of Time series in 6th or 7th grade which was.. 1995. The first few books had already come out (about 5 I think). I am now two years past college, and Robert Jordan is keeping faithful to the writeup he places at the end of his novels, which is "to keep writing til they nail shut his coffin."

With a new installment coming out every year or two, it's a pain to try remembering all of the characters in the Wheel of Time universe. Yes, he's taken Tolkien and world-making to a new level. I used to be able to re-read the series from the start every time a new one came out to refresh my memory, but at the 11th book, with each a good 700 to 900 pages long, it's getting to be a little trying.

Some long time ago, I had the feeling that things were beginning to take shape, and that the three main heroes would wind up at the end of their quest at about book 8 or 7. At the end of each book though, you get the feeling that.. they've won the battle, but it's just another battle. Perhaps it's keeping in theme with the Wheel of Time concept, that things just keep getting spun in and out of the wheel, and that the Pattern it weaves repeats itself throughout the Ages. Maybe there is no end to the series?

For those who are not familiar with the series, The Wheel of Time follows Rand al'Thor a typical farm boy as he discovers that he is the Dragon Reborn, a messiah-type figure tasked to defeat the Dark One at the Last Battle. The setting is an alternate universe complete with various races that are a mix from our own universe (maybe you can spot a little European, Japanese, Native American, Chinese, etc.) and its own languages.

Although it seems to dwell in the same genre as Tolkien (a fantasy-type alternate universe), there are differences in Jordan's work. Jordan is a student of history, and it shows in his work. Battles, campaigns, governments and rulers plotting against one another are all more detailed and vivid. Jordan also gives a more prominent role to women. The series is not lacking in strong female characters.

Specific to this installment, it is typical Jordan fare, and it is as always, interesting to follow the character and event development. However, given the fact that Jordan has found the time to write a sort of prelude to the series, A New Spring, it seems like he is taking his time to finish this series.

So if you think you're up to it, be prepared to read until they nail shut your coffin.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For every reader, there comes a moment when he comes across a writer, the writer, who will change his life. Suddenly, what he thought was a solitary experience, had apparently been written about and experienced by other people, fictional or no. It is a strange comfort to see your thoughts and feelings expressed either in such familiar, or even an elevated language, one that beautifully affirms the understanding of your presence.

In Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “The Shadow of the Wind,” we meet one such reader.

For his tenth birthday, Daniel Sempere is brought by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and asked to join in its secrecy. As is the custom for first-time visitors, he is given leave to choose one book, just one, among the thousands quietly nestled in the shelves of bygone eras, to guard for life. He is immediately drawn to “The Shadow of the Wind,” written by a Julian Carax, and it is at this point where he, unknowingly, opens a volume of complications. For one, he wanted to know everything about his curious acquisition, and, with well-placed questions, discovers that his book is the last copy not only of that title, but of all Carax’s works in existence. Furthermore, his goal is obstructed by a man smelling perpetually of smoke and paper, intent on getting a hold of “The Shadow of the Wind.” This unlikely chain of events compels Daniel to chase after any information on Julian Carax he could get, introducing the reader to an unforgettable set of characters. There is Clara, the blind scholar Daniel first falls in love with, the crazy Fermin who is a scientist, philosopher and a madman but, above all, we come to know Julian Carax, whose life Daniel unearths a strange and almost miraculous affinity to.

“Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”

“The Shadow of the Wind” is at once mystery, thriller, coming of age, and romance. Zafon’s skill in shifting between past and present enables the reader to see into both pre- and post-war Barcelona. However, despite Julian’s and Daniel’s “age-centric” obstacles – avoiding the army, worrying about the family business – they are linked by the timeless thread of growing up, loving and surviving. Finally, there is the universal relationship with literature that is conveyed in every page, be it described in the characters or projected directly onto the readers.

(On a personal note, I’m worried that people will compare it to “Da Vinci Code” because of its “mainstream” appeal (it has been in the Spain best-seller list for over a year), and the fact that it is being made into a movie. Despite that, I am positive that even the choosiest of readers will enjoy this novel.)