Throughout the past few months, this course felt like an endless seesaw ride, bouncing against different – yet similar – themes and cultures. In the beginning of the course, I questioned what “Romance Studies” was, or rather, what it could have meant. However, right from the introductory lecture, I realized I won’t be able to […]
Posted in Blogs, Conclusion | Tagged with adulthood, Bricolage, family, literature, Magic Realism, recollection, Relationship, temporality, war
Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s The Society of Reluctant Dreamers was a very interesting read. It felt surreal in one hand, but also had a lot of relatable, applicable lessons to take away as a reader. The first thing that stood out to me was protagonist Daniel Benchimol’s unstable state. Although in the early pages Benchimol stated […]
Posted in Agualusa, Blogs | Tagged with Democracy, dictatorship, Dreams, family, literature, politics, Relationship, Surrealism, temporality, war
This week we were tasked with reading the Soldier of Salamis; I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I just did not enjoy this book. It is a book that disinterested me, was too long, and was kind of confusing at times. I hate to be like this, and will try my best to write […]
Posted in Blogs, Bolaño, Cercas | Tagged with Civil war, memory, narrator, Relationship, repetition, soldier of salamis, Spain, true or false, truth, Weekly Book Blog, writing
I was passionately engaged while reading The Time of the Doves, mainly for two reasons. First of all, I really enjoyed the narrative of the novel. I felt like the first-person narration of Natalia made the narrative more credible. Normally, first-person narratives are less credible than a “neutral” third-person view, but since this story was […]
Posted in Blogs, Rodoreda | Tagged with Bricolage, Construction, family, gender, literature, narrative, Recovery, Relationship, temporality, war
After reading Black Shack Alley, I really enjoyed this novel. I have read stories with similar themes like colonialism, supremacy, and poverty, but nothing like how the main character reconciles with these themes. At the beginning of the book, the main character is almost sort of naive to the idea of his grandparents and the […]
Posted in Blogs, Zobel | Tagged with Colonialism, influential, josé, juxtaposition, Martinique, narrator, poverty, protection, reality, Relationship
Reading Moravia’s Agostino brought me a new perspective towards the transition between youth and adulthood. While I was trying to empathize the situation Agostino was going though, such as him witnessing his mother’s relationship with the young man, I could not understand – by heart – what Agostino could have felt in those moments. […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with Relationship, Sensuality
