MADUPONT: which Ruiz Zafon book are you reading?
I'm not reading it right now. It's up in the(geographically,politically) Latin America
forum. Like you, I'd have to special order it. I just recently was notified by the publisher as I have a lot of publishing notifications. Most of the commercial publishers(unlike the academic university publishers) then turn around and tell you to buy it from your local bookstore because they are "supporting" these chains of distribution in order to keep them alive.
These stores began on the premise that people would randomly pick up books by browsing the sale tables for something "interesting". I tend instead to order a specific book from them (but, depending on the age of the book, may order from a second-hand book dealer in a slightly just over the state line in one direction or the other,where the reader/collectors are a little hipper than where I'm located;it saves on the shipping and handling charges to locate it as close as possible as long as close-as-possible is into something that esoteric as Ruiz Zafon).
What caught my attention in the presentation of this latest by the publisher were several things. 1) the selection of an example of the writing style was just sufficiently sexually suggestive to catch and hold the interest of a reader into where the story-line was going (the hook);
2) then, when you begin to relate it to what it naggingly reminds you of, the setting quickly recalled one of the earlier to mid-chapters of Gunter Grass, Peeling the Onion, which is a very simple memoir, in which he describes enjoying solitary reading in the attic of the apartment block in which he lived as an adolescent. A place where he could look down upon the exterior cityscape but poke around in old luggage and storage, and read in solitude.
3) that immediately called to mind my youngest brother who died five years ago/last week, who preferred to live exactly as described by Gunter Grass and ended up similarly to where Ruiz Zafon's story begins.
4) here's the kicker: the events that made the news and the top interest at the start of last week, a comparison of the major works of a film artist as opposed by the most minimal knowledge of his sex-life, so that much of the thematic clues in the film productions are unperceived by the general public, found me remembering one particular film that was so utterly weird and disturbing which now surprised me at how many other people were perturbed and frightened by the mood of,The Tenant; although they argued about it intensely as to how they differed in their interpretations of what Roman Polanski was saying.
5) Snap! that's when the light-bulb exploded, as I realized that Ruiz Zafon had been writing a novel about the same state of mind from which Polanski had created an upsetting, mysterious film.
Meanwhile, it fits it with the mood of the lyric of Alfonsina Storni. I would have said "lyrical" but you know in English this calls to mind something light and charming, as in French; whereas Storni's lyric is touched by the somberness of Portuguese fado.
Hard to say which style I prefer, the lilting melancholy of Alfonsina Storni or the more definite Indian rhythms of Merceds Sosa that began to fascinate me more than sixty years ago although I had not heard of her before your post. I have an Italian friend who comes and goes to Carrara and Rome whose appearance is similar to Sosa, as is my sister with that openess that radiates broadly from her face. They are like female mountains.
Will go retrieve Ruiz Zafon's title for you.
