I am a lawyer, a ferocious reader who also loves to write. Expect some book reviews, storytelling and more…
Book Review
“I had a Dickens childhood”, heard once. Only reading the life or Pip, or at least his beginnings, one becomes aware of what that means. Despite the reactions a reader must feel learning about the circumstances in which he lived and the bad luck that was always on his side, making things worse, Pip seemed not to notice. Not at the beginning.
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Book Review
As per her signature style, The Years is a very intimate account of facts. Some reviewers argue this is a portrait, implying a description of one’s self, that could easily fall into an autobiography. If this book is indeed a portrait, it reflects not only the side of Ernaux personality, but also the personality and moods of an entire country, France. As an adopted French, I should have read this book in its original language. I found the translation a bit dry, especially in relation not to the narrative itself, but to the consequences of that narrative into the reader’s emotions. Ernaux knows her country and her culture very well. This is why in The Years she did not speak by the first person of singular, but by the first person of plural. It is a narrative based on a political and a social perception that belongs to an entire country, in a specific period of time that fortunately (or unfortunately) extend to these times.
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Book Review
‘You notice as it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming —in fact not at all a warming— yet suddenly summer ends near, a possibility, even a promise’. When those blue nights are finished is not anymore a warming but a warning of darkness, of solitude, of silence. This is how Joan Didion explains the title of her book, it is an opening to a heart wrenching story. The story of a mother who sees her own child die, slowly, painfully, in an ICU for twenty months. This is a story in which Didion also analyses carefully and to the detail whether her daughter showed signs of dying, emotionally dying, way before, and her own involvement as a mother in such a cruel destiny.
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Book Review
‘There isn’t a thing in the world worth fighting for except peace of mind’. All his books are autobiographical and interconnected between them, from ‘Tropic of Cancer’ and ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, to ‘Plexus’, ‘Sexus’ and lastly ‘Nexus’. All have the same main character, the same author, Henry Miller and his exhaustive struggle to become a known writer, despite the innumerable difficulties that seem to attack him from every angle. A childhood with a toxic mother, followed by a total incapacity to overcome poverty and finishing with a wife that possesses so many prisms and fake stories to every question that not even the same Miller can decipher.
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Book Review
‘You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends’. John Dunn, Joan Didion’s husband, died of a heart attack, suddenly and unexpectedly. In fact, the sick one was not John but Quintana, their daughter, who had been in a coma caused by a bad pneumonia. By that that point they didn’t know if Quintana was not going to live, or to die. In the words of her doctor ‘We’re still not sure which way this is going’.
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Book Review
This is an outstanding novel narrated in first person by Stevens, the butler. Of him one could say was born for the job, after his father also dedicated his life to the service of other lords before he did. Stevens is a particular person. Loyalty would be the perfect word to describe his personality, but also a bit of a sweet naivety. He worked for many years at Darlington Hall, Lord Darlington’s estate.
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Book Review
This book impressed me in many ways, because no matter how Africa had been presented to us by different authors, this novel has peeled all the layers to show itself as raw as it gets. We could say that the story of Yusuf, the protagonist, is heartbreaking, a story that was based on pure abandonment and solitude. Yusuf was neglected by their parents, handled to a business man to whom they had debt, without even explaining the situation. That was their payment. ‘Uncle Aziz’ was to take Yusuf to his house to make him work to repay. He was 12.
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Book Review
This book fell in my hands as a simple coincidence. It was a gift. I’ve heard about Siddhartha, of course, but never expected a book to be so deeply grounded and at the same time so ethereal. Paulo Coelho, one of my favourite authors and who made introductions for this book, explains the troubles Herman Hesse —the German born author— had to go through in order to complete this book. When reading it, one can decipher why: This is a book about illumination, of looking for the One and Only, and finding It through the inner self. Of acknowledging the internal divinity, the infinite possibilities that connect the Universe with every human being. Hesse had discussed with acquaintances about his lack of guidance on how to finish the book. The task he had on his hands was too great and proved of enormous challenges.
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Book Review
This story opened my eyes. Once again. We have all heard about the Holocaust, its millions of tragedies, its injustices, its suffering and pain. It does hurt to read such a detailed account of torture, even if we think we have seen and heard it all. We have not. It astonishes me that someone can suffer in this degree and still survive.
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Book Review
Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This woman is the first that comes to my mind when I think about this book. She is prismatic, multifaceted, a whole, complete, intellectual, emotional and spiritual woman. Wherever side you look of her, it has been worked, it is full with experiences and memories, and specially with wonderful teachings in which every single woman can benefit from.
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