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If a thriller can be written that is based on internal thought processes rather than actual action, this is it. There is action in the story but it is almost always happening offstage, off camera, fade out, etc. The man from the cafe who is murdered, the plot point central to the story, is known to the main character only through a newspaper story and the man's absence.
This lack of movement almost made me abandon the book, and about 100 pages in (roughly Part I), I set it aside to read other thi ...more
This lack of movement almost made me abandon the book, and about 100 pages in (roughly Part I), I set it aside to read other thi ...more
A tangled web of murder, motive and psychological dissertation and analysis. The book kicks off with delightful intrigue – told by Maria who frequents a café close to where she works at a publishing house and sees the same couple regularly. She watches them and wonders about their lives and their tender and loving relationship. How many times have we all done that – people watched – in airports, in restaurants, at bus stops? And then she doesn’t see them for some time and learns through one of h
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3 - Javier Marias is great at staging a scene and portraying a character and its motives but what works beautifully in a "a heart so white " , just does not work here. the book is over verbal if you can describe a book in such a way. the stream of thoughts of the narrative linger and linger around subjects of grief and death and love and merge into long monologs that other characters give.
in a way it seems like the writer was trying to inflate a much smaller story.
Again , this can work in other ...more
in a way it seems like the writer was trying to inflate a much smaller story.
Again , this can work in other ...more
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I read this book under the wrong premise. I have been looking for books set in Madrid as I am planning a trip there and this title showed up in a list somewhere. I was under the impression then that the city of Madrid would be prominent in the story which isn’t the case.
Had I not been so frustrated about the fact that Madrid and its sites are rarely mentioned, maybe I could have liked this book more. It is one of those genre bending murder mysteries, where the murder itself takes a second place ...more
Had I not been so frustrated about the fact that Madrid and its sites are rarely mentioned, maybe I could have liked this book more. It is one of those genre bending murder mysteries, where the murder itself takes a second place ...more
I think I should give up on Spanish books. I got 2/3 in and couldn't bear it anymore. That's about where I quite with Gabriel Garcia Marquez as well. Something in this cultural voice drives me made with its pointless wandering. I don't get it.
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Aug 10, 2013
Kris Fernandez-Everett
marked it as to-read
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review of another edition
Shelves:
en-espanol
Oct 28, 2018
Karawan
marked it as to-read
