Tag: Spain

Day 707: Don Quijote

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Cover for Don QuijoteI know. This is not the spelling of “Quixote” most people are accustomed to seeing, but it is the one used in my Norton Critical Edition, translated by Burton Raffel. And a sprightly translation it is.

Don Quijote is the story of an old man who has studied the popular chivalric romances so much that they have addled his brain. He declares himself a knight errant and takes to the road seeking adventure. Accompanying him is a neighboring farmer, Sancho Panza, who he has convinced to come with him as his squire in exchange for a share in certain rewards. In particular, Sancho has his heart set on the governorship of an island.

Don Quijote doesn’t just look for adventure. In the first book, he hurls himself at every passer by, convincing himself that windmills are giants, a barber is a knight, an inn is a castle. Above all else, he worships his lady, the beautiful Dulcinea, whom he has never met but whom Sancho remembers as a muscular peasant girl.

Don Quijote is both a parody of the chivalric romances and a satire against the Spanish conquistadores. Its most important distinction is that it is considered the first modern novel. I found volume one to be amusing in a sort of slapstick style, as Don Quijote’s adventures always go wrong and end up with him and Sancho Panza being beaten up.

Volume two was a little too much of the same, though. In a bit of metafiction, Cervantes lists some of the things readers criticized from the first volume and then attempts to avoid them. So, for example, the two adventurers are not beaten up as often. However, both volumes contain long disquisitions on such topics as marriage, poetry, chivalry that don’t all translate well into modern times.

Finally, after Don Quijote had himself lowered into Montesino’s Cave to see its wonders and then fell asleep and dreamt a bunch of nonsense and never even saw the cave, I had to stop. Quijote was in the midst of recounting his ridiculous dream, which he took for reality, and it seemed to go on and on. I leafed ahead, looking for the end of it, never found the end, and finally lost patience. I fully believe, since apparently someone else published a book about our hero after the first volume came out, that Cervantes only brought Quijote back out on the road so that he could kill him off at the end.

Related Posts

People of the Book

The Black Tulip

Othello

Day 496: My First Classics Club Review! The Long Ships

~ whatmeread ~ 18 Comments

Cover for The Long ShipsBest Book of the Week!
Today I’m posting my first review for The Classics Club, the one chosen for me by the Classics Club Spin #5!  The Long Ships is a great start to the Classics Club for me. I found it to be a rousing adventure story full of deadpan humor.

This book is the result of Bengtsson’s desire to write a realistic novel about the Vikings. A poet, Bengtsson also wrote essays and a biography of Charles XII, but he became more widely known for The Long Ships.

His protagonist Orm Tostesson is only a boy when the novel begins. Orm is eager to go a-viking to Ireland with his father and older brother, but his mother tends to be protective of him, so he stays home. Shortly after the men leave, he attempts to stop some sheep stealing on the part of a group of Vikings from Lister and is kidnapped by them. The Vikings soon find him an able and intelligent companion, so he becomes part of their crew rather than being kept a slave.

In the course of their adventures down the western coast of Europe, they are initially successful but eventually are captured and sold as galley slaves. In return for a service they performed for a Jew from Córdoba, they are freed to serve as bodyguards for lord Almansur, the regent and imprisoner of the young Caliph of Córdoba. There they serve for years until circumstances force them to flee for home.

This voyage is the first of three related in the novel, during which “Red” Orm meets his bride to be, loses her when his best friend Toke steals her father’s concubine, goes a-viking to England to try to retrieve her from English priests, and many years later travels down the Dnieper to bring back a stash of hidden gold. Even when he is settled at home, he is involved in tiffs with his neighbors, attempts to murder him on the orders of the evil King Sven, visits from unusual acquaintances, rowdy celebrations, and a Thing, a convocation of various groups of Vikings for settling their differences.

There is plenty of action in this novel, but what I find most charming are its air of insouciance and its ongoing (although somewhat grisly) humor. It has a sense of playfulness, especially about the differences between the Norsemen’s old religion, Christianity, and Islam, to which Orm and his fellows are temporarily forced to convert. Take, for example, this passage from the prologue, about the arrival of the shaven men, or priests, in Skania:

They had many strange tales to relate, and at first people were curious and listened to them eagerly, and women found it pleasant to be baptized by these foreigners and to be presented with a white shift. Before long, however, the foreigners began to run short of the shifts, and people wearied of their sermons, finding them tedious and their matter doubtful . . . . So then there was something of a decline in conversions, and the shaven men, who talked incessantly of peace and were above all very violent in their denunciation of the gods, were one by one seized by devout persons and were hung up on sacred ash trees and shot at with arrows, and offered to the birds of Odin.

To give you another idea of the humor in this novel, a Viking tells a story of a wedding that broke up into a fight. When the bride sees the groom’s friends beating up one of her relatives, she hits the groom with a torch, which starts his hair on fire, beginning another fire in which 11 people are killed. Everyone agrees that it was the best wedding they ever attended.

The story of Red Orm is told in a detached manner but by a truly talented storyteller. It is full of sly humor and observations of human folly. I really enjoyed it.

Day 466: Literary Wives: The Inquisitor’s Wife

~ whatmeread ~ 14 Comments

Today the Literary Wives blog group members all review The Inquisitor’s Wife. Be sure to check out the other reviews at the links at the bottom of this review. We encourage you to participate by submitting your comments or a link to your own review to any of our blogs, or you can submit a comment or link on our new Facebook page! For more information, see my Literary Wives page.

Cover for The Inquisitor's WifeThe Review

The Inquisitor’s Wife is a historical novel with a promising concept that is not fulfilled. Although set in an interesting era and place, its characters behave as they need to just to drive the plot.

Marisol Garcia is the daughter of Diego, a respected Old Christian of 15th century Seville, and Magdalena, a converso, or Jewish woman forcibly converted to Christianity. Although as a child Marisol observes her mother’s celebration of the Sabbath on Friday nights without understanding what it means, when she is 11, she is ridiculed by the neighborhood children for being a Jew. Humiliated, she turns against her mother and refuses to take part in her rituals.

This, aside from a complete lack of a sense of their household and daily life, was my first problem with this novel, because Marisol’s loyalties and feelings about her heritage shift back and forth throughout the novel. Having adored her mother, she turns against her in an instant after one incident. Later, she changes her mind several times, and in general her behavior as a young woman is more like that of a spoiled adolescent.

As Queen Isabella gains power, the conversos of the city hope she will protect them, as she herself has married one of them, King Ferdinand. They are about to be gravely disappointed.

Eventually, everyone hears rumors of an Inquisition, and Magdalena becomes terrified that the horrible events of her childhood will recur. She urges Diego to move the family to Portugal, but secure in his own innocence and unaware of his wife’s activities, he is firm in his belief that they are not in danger. Marisol follows her mother outside one night to the river and sees her drown herself, apparently from despair.

Marisol has been in love with her neighbor Antonio since they were children. They are engaged while he is away studying, but after she does not hear from him for over a year, she believes he has abandoned her. Shortly after her mother’s death, she finds out her father has made some kind of deal with another neighbor, whom she detests, Gabriel Hojeda, who is a civil administrator for the Inquisition. She is forced to marry him, and her father renounces her.

Of course, he is trying to protect her as the Inquisition is going after him (for no apparent reason but that his wife was a converso), but it takes her awhile to figure this out. She continues to be clueless throughout the novel, not picking up on any of the hints that are strewn everywhere. Then, on her wedding night, Gabriel’s intimidating brother Fray Hojeda asks for a promise that the two will not consummate their marriage for a month. There is no apparent reason for this request either except the plot’s need to save Marisol for Antonio and to introduce a sadistic sex scene toward the end of the novel.

I can go on and on about the unlikeliness of the plot as Marisol and her father fall deeper into danger. But one tiny spoiler reveals how poorly thought out this novel is. Marisol and Antonio don’t hear from each other in a year. Why? Because jealous Gabriel is stealing their letters. How he does this is not explained, but mail is not exactly sitting out in the mailbox. Oh, let’s have another example. In a late scene in the novel, Marisol and Antonio swim to safety—this in a time when most Europeans didn’t swim, even sailors, not to mention gently born Spanish ladies dressed in enveloping and heavy garb. She would have sunk immediately.

As I mentioned before, there is no sense of the characters’ daily lives except for Magdalena’s time spent painting ceramics, and that is in service of the plot. When Marisol gets married, instead of taking over the household as a well-trained wife of her class would do, she asks her husband what she should do and since he gives her nothing to do, apparently does nothing except run around town unchaperoned. Except for Marisol, all of the characters are completely undeveloped. Everyone is either good or bad. Although this novel has the opportunity to say something about the Inquisition, it disintegrates into a messy damsel in distress story that becomes more absurd as it continues. If it was purely a romp, I wouldn’t judge it so harshly, but it seems to have pretensions to something more serious.

Literary Wives logoWhat does this book say about wives or the experience of being a wife?

Marisol’s marriage to Gabriel is just a plot device. Even its motivation doesn’t make sense, because if she and her father are in danger just because of her mother, Gabriel’s having married Marisol would logically put him in danger. He would not be able to protect her and in fact, does not really try to. As to the other marriage, her parents’ is warm but only scantily depicted. The only true family, that of Marisol’s uncle, comes to the novel late, and we don’t see much of it.

In what way does this woman define “wife” or is defined by “wife”?

This novel doesn’t really concern itself with wifehood. Gabriel’s definition of a wife is someone who is in his power. Other than being another threat to the damsel and a way to keep her and Antonio apart, Marisol’s status as a wife is hardly even regarded or treated with. In fact, in another unlikely plot twist, she is asked to keep her marriage a secret, even though she is living in her husband’s house unchaperoned and would have her reputation damaged if she was not thought to be married. Diego and Magdalena love each other, but Magdalena deceives Diego in continuing to observe her religion, and we don’t see much of them together.

Be sure to view the posts of the other “wives,” as follows:

Ariel of One Little Library
Audra of Unabridged Chick
Carolyn of Rosemary and Reading Glasses
Cecilia of Only You
Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors

Day 369: The Alchemist

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Cover for The AlchemistIn my opinion, a fable for adults requires something striking to hold the attention. Telling the story as one would to a child is not going to cut it. It must be wittily written or beautifully illustrated or have some other compelling characteristic.

I have to admit I did not finish this fable about a Spanish shepherd boy who is told to travel to Egypt to find his “personal legend.” I found it heavy handed in approach and did not find anything special about the way the story was told to make it outstanding. I found the fairy tale writing style irritating.

I know this book has been very popular, but it is not the book for me. I guess I am reminded of the popularity years ago of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, another book I thought was wildly overrated. I could tell where The Alchemist was going within 50 pages, and I didn’t want to go with it.

Day 358: People of the Book

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for People of the BookBest Book of the Week!

I read People of the Book several years ago and remembered that it was good, but when re-reading it for my book club, I enjoyed it even more. The novel is based on the history of a Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. Part of the novel is envisioned based on what is known of the book’s history, while the rest is invented.

In the immediate aftermath of the Bosnian war, Hanna Heath, an expert in the restoration of old books, is asked to restore the priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, a famous book believed twice to have been destroyed by war that was both times rescued by Moslem museum curators. The book is especially important because of its beautiful illustrations, as before it was discovered, scholars believed that old Hebrew books did not contain such illuminations.

While Hanna is working on the book, she makes observations and collects artifacts that will help trace its history. She notes that the book once had clasps that are now missing, collects an insect wing, and scrapes residue from staining.

Hanna also becomes involved with the man who rescued the book, Ozren Karaman, whose wife was killed during the war and whose baby son is in the hospital with a brain injury. As Hanna was raised by an aloof and competitive mother, though, she is poor at forming attachments.

When Hanna finishes restoring the book, she follows up with research into the clasp and the artifacts she collected. As she finds out about each item, the novel goes farther back in time, explaining what happened to the book and telling the stories of the people involved with it, until the creation of the book in 15th century Spain.

A poor Jewish girl named Lola works for the partisans in the forest outside Sarajevo during World War II after the Jews are expelled from the city by the Nazis and her family is shipped off to camps. Later she is helped to safety by the Moslem curator of the museum, who also has a book to hide. A 19th century Viennese bookbinder who is dying from syphilis steals the beautiful silver clasps from the book to exchange with his doctor for treatment. In 1609 Venice, a priest working for the Inquisition saves the book from burning but confiscates it from its owner. A young girl saves the book as the Jews are expelled from Spain in 1492.

These are just the bones of some of the absorbing stories that draw you along as Brooks imagines the history of the book. Each tale is vividly imagined and skillfully told, and they are all held together by Hanna’s experiences. People of the Book is a gracefully written and imaginative novel that emphasizes the contributions of multiple cultures and religions to the book’s creation and safety.

Day 318: Cathedral of the Sea

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for Cathedral of the SeaCathedral of the Sea was written to relate some of the history of Barcelona and of the Church of Santa Maria de la Mar. Unfortunately for Ildefonso Falcones’ readers, even though there is some fascinating material here, this purpose is all too obvious.

The novel begins with Bernat Estanyol’s wedding. Because of his father’s foresight in making a will, Bernat is allowed to keep his father’s property on his death. Otherwise, it would be forfeit to his lord, as Bernat is a serf. Left relatively prosperous, Bernat decides to marry a shy girl named Francesca. However, on the night of the wedding, his lord chooses to exercise his droit de seigneur, his right to deflower the bride. He follows this act up by forcing Bernat to rape her, too.

This horrible start to their marriage shows no sign of improving after Bernat’s son Arnau is born, and more atrocities follow. Eventually, to save his son’s life, Bernat flees the land, making for Barcelona, where, if he can live for a year and a day without being recaptured, he can become a free man of the city.

The growing Arnau soon becomes the novel’s main character, and he has many hardships to overcome. Missing a mother, he becomes fascinated with the image of Mary at the Santa Maria de la Mar, which is just being built as a cathedral for the common people. The novel follows Arnau’s life and the building of the cathedral together.

Well, sort of. The book’s jacket compares this novel to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, but there is really very little comparison. The cathedral is only brought into the plot periodically when needed or when Falcones wants to tell us something about it.

And that’s the problem with the entire book. Although the novel deals with the themes of the medieval caste system and the problem of justice for common men, and also treats of the special rights of the area, everything is driven by the plot. Even with a third-person omniscient narration, we seldom learn what anyone is thinking unless it is important to the plot. Characters are not so much developed as given things to say and do.

The plot itself has no focus. When I read at the end of the novel that Falcones followed the Crónica written by King Pedro the Third, that explained a lot. To show this history, Falcones must put his main character through some contortions. Beginning as a bastaixo, one of the men who unload ships and carry their cargo into town on their backs, Arnau runs off to war and later becomes a money lender, an extremely unlikely sequence of careers.

Characters appear as needed, disappear, and then pop up again when they’re needed. This might make sense for some characters but not for all of them. Women are uniformly raped, die from the plague, become prostitutes, or are otherwise mistreated, as if Falcones doesn’t know what to do with them except have something terrible happen to them.

One of the worst instances of this treatment is of Maria, Arnau’s cardboard wife. (The rest of this paragraph is a spoiler.) During all the first years of their marriage, Arnau is involved in a torrid affair with another woman. Arnau wants to leave this woman, but she threatens to tell his guild, which will expel him for immoral conduct, so that he has no work. Arnau goes to war to get rid of her, and when he finally sheds his mistress, do we have scenes of everyday married life? No. We immediately jump five years, and within two pages Maria dies of the plague.

Finally, we come to Joan, Arnau’s adopted brother. Treated with nothing but kindness and love by Bernat and Arnau despite a rocky start in life, he becomes a priest, after which he disappears for years. When he returns, he has suddenly become a hard, self-righteous right hand of the Inquisition.

My conclusion? Falcones is clearly not an able enough storyteller to skillfully handle a complex plot and many characters.

Day 213: The Monk

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

I don’t usually have problems with the language of the classics or with appreciating a book that is long out of its time, but I had one with The Monk. Although it is considered a classic gothic novel, published in the height of their popularity in 1796, I found it boring. I imagine that for its day it was very shocking.

Ambrosio is a monk at a Capuchin monastery in Madrid. Although he is considered to be almost a saint, he is full of vanity and lust. He becomes sexually obsessed with a woman who is disguised as a boy in the monastery, and succumbs to temptation. Then his eye lights on a pious virgin. Gradually, he becomes more and more debauched until he is completely given up to depravity.

What irritates me is the narrative, which is repeatedly interrupted by long and boring digressions, apparently to further the gothic flavor. An example is the story of the brave Lorenzo, who battles with bandits in the forests of Germany. The novel is also rabidly anti-Catholic, as almost all the representatives of the church are scheming, power-seeking, or just plain evil. Although the general over-the-top quality of the novel should have appealed to me, I found myself just not interested enough to finish it.