I liked this book, but I have to admit that it was somewhat confusing for me with multiple twists and turns - love, murder, mystery. Some books do that to me and I'm not sure what it is. Is it because the story is told backward? Or are there too many characters with unfamiliar names that start with the same letter - like F or B or J......?!! Because of this, I was getting the characters mixed up from time to time and forgetting who is who. Maybe I've been eating too many carbs.......
The CEMETERY OF FORGOTTEN BOOKS (introduced in the opening chapters) is a clever concept and did build some real intrigue for me, and obviously for that 10-year-old-boy, DANIEL, who narrates the story.
I could totally relate to what DANIEL said about after his mother died - a very empty and frightening experience.
- On that June morning, I woke up screaming at first light. My heart was pounding in my chest as if it feared that my soul wanted to carve its way out and run off down the stairs. My father hurried into my room and held me in his arms, trying to calm me. "I can't remember her face. I can't remember Mommy's face," I muttered, breathless.
The author describes things so creatively. I feel compelled to share some terrific passages.
Page 17
The Ateneo was - and remains - one of the many places in Barcelona where the nineteenth century has not yet been served its eviction notice.
Page 20
I swallowed, feeling my pulse race, and gave silent thanks there were no eyewitnesses to my blushing, which could have set a cigar alight a foot away.
Page 44
"You do speak well, sir. It shows that you've been to that Sorbet university."
"The Sorbonne," he would answer, gently correcting her.
Page 71
"I don't know. People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough."
Page 90
"Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves."
Page 92
"Daniel, you're as white as a nun's buttock. Are you all right?" he asked, giving a worried look.
Page 185
"A good father?"
"Yes. Like yours. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's the father but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up and resemble."
Page 186
"So that I can deserve her. You cannot understand such things right now, because you're young. But in good time, you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up."
Page 203
"You know what kids are like. Deep down, God has filled them with goodness, but they repeat what they hear at home."
Page 209
" Is it true you haven't read any of these books?"
"Books are boring."
"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you," answered Julian.
Page 363
Miquel Moliner suffered from that affliction of those who feel guilty when not working; although he respected and even envied the leisure others enjoyed, he fled from it."
Page 366
"Paris requires more than two days," said Julian. "It won't listen to reason."
Page 371
"Making money isn't hard in itself," he complained. "What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to it."
Page 484
"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day."
JOAN
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