WAR, SO MUCH WAR

Name: WAR, SO MUCH WAR
Author: Mercè Rodoreda
ISBN: 978-1-940953-22-9

by Mercè Rodoreda ; translated by Maruxa Relaño & Martha Tennent ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2015

Poetic, mythical, literate, laced with allusions to the world’s literature, this novel is a stew in which the flavors never...

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A boy runs away to join the war and tells the horrific tales of his incessant travels.

Rodoreda’s last novel creates a nightmare world inhabited by Adrià Guinart, a 15-year-old who leaves “the prison of [his] home” with his friend Rossend. They become separated, and Adrià begins an endless journey, with the destruction and death of war always near. The story plays out in a series of encounters with iconic characters—the hanged man, the miller’s wife, a wise man, a hermit—all within a stark landscape reminiscent of Kafka and the fantastical apparitions of Garcia Márquez. It's a series of fairy tales held together by the narrative of a boy wandering a mythical world. Then the novel takes a different turn with a Gothic interlude. Adrià is taken into a house where Senyor Ardèvol and his housekeeper, Senyora Isabel, care for him, sheltering him from his nightmares in which “Death, with green teeth, sat on the belly of a cloud.” There is respite, and a family atmosphere, except for Ardèvol’s being consumed by an old mirror in the hallway where he sees disembodied eyes next to his own reflection. Adrià reads the papers left to him after Ardèvol’s death and pieces together the story of his life. When he forgoes the inheritance left him by the dead man, the story of wandering the bleak landscape resumes, and Adrià continues on his way to witness “everything that I had just seen but did not exist.”

Poetic, mythical, literate, laced with allusions to the world’s literature, this novel is a stew in which the flavors never quite come together.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-940953-22-9

Page Count: 220

Publisher: Open Letter

Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GARDEN BY THE SEA
by Mercè Rodoreda ; translated by Maruxa Relaño & Martha Tennent

- BOOK REVIEW
A BROKEN MIRROR
by Mercè Rodoreda & translated by Josep Miquel Sobrer

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LAUGH-ETERIA

by Douglas Florian ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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Florian’s seventh collection of verse is also his most uneven; though the flair for clever rhyme that consistently lights up his other books, beginning with Monster Motel (1993), occasionally shows itself—“Hello, my name is Dracula/My clothing is all blackula./I drive a Cadillacula./I am a maniacula”—too many of the entries are routine limericks, putdowns, character portraits, rhymed lists that fall flat on the ear, or quick quips: “It’s hard to be anonymous/When you’re a hippopotamus.” Florian’s language and simple, thick-lined cartoons illustrations are equally ingenuous, and he sticks to tried-and-true subjects, from dinosaurs to school lunch, but the well of inspiration seems dry; revisit his hilarious Bing Bang Boing (1994) instead. (index) (Poetry. 8-10)

Pub Date: April 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-15-202084-5

Page Count: 158

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

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Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.