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anusha_reads 's review for:
Simpatía
by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón
medium-paced
BOOK 10: SIMPATÍA BY RODRIGO BLANCO CALDERÓN, TRANSLATED BY NOEL HERNÁNDEZ GONZÁLEZ AND DANIEL HAHN, LONGLISTED FOR #INTERNATIONALBOOKER2024
I obtained this book after much searching. I finally got it on Kobo but found the app to be very stubborn. It only displays the chapter pages and not the total pages or the current page number. It wouldn’t highlight text easily. Anyway, I finished this novel. Yaay!
Like Ulysses (Odysseus), our protagonist, Ulises Kan, is also on a mission. Ulises’s wife leaves him, and his father-in-law dies, and he inherits a will that tasks him with transforming their Ayala estate into a nonprofit dog rescue home within a specified timeframe He takes up this challenge and faces more and more difficulties. Some help him and others make things worse. A fan of the movie Godfather, he is found quoting it here and there. There is a constant reference to the Collected works of Elizabeth von Arnim, which delves into dogs' lives, among other topics.
I found this novel rather confusing. It is set in a Venezuela plagued by poverty and corruption, and the stray dogs portray some aspect of it??
Did you know Tasseography is a fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, and even wine sediments? A part of the book talks about coffee reading, lucky, not lucky, danger, etc.
Although there are no stray dogs in Amsterdam, a very interesting point was made regarding the availability of bikes as cheap commodities, which are frequently stolen and discarded into the river. I never understood the relevance of this comparison. Perhaps the author was trying to compare the two countries, Venezuela and the Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam. So, are people in Venezuela heartlessly dumping dogs as opposed to the cycles in Amsterdam?!
I loved the huge dog Iros, a Leonberger. Did you know that the breed Leonbergers could weigh sixty to eighty kilos?
The translation is impeccable, and i didn't feel like i was reading a translated literature.
"SOMETIMES ONE SIMPLY DECIDES THAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT SUFFERING FOR ANOTHER PERSON. JUST LIKE THAT. AND ONLY DEATH, WHETHER THEIR OWN OR THAT OF THE OTHER PERSON, CAN BREAK THAT BOND."
I’m unclear about many aspects of the book. The ending was ambiguous, leaving me with a sense of lack of closure, and maybe that was intentional?!
I obtained this book after much searching. I finally got it on Kobo but found the app to be very stubborn. It only displays the chapter pages and not the total pages or the current page number. It wouldn’t highlight text easily. Anyway, I finished this novel. Yaay!
Like Ulysses (Odysseus), our protagonist, Ulises Kan, is also on a mission. Ulises’s wife leaves him, and his father-in-law dies, and he inherits a will that tasks him with transforming their Ayala estate into a nonprofit dog rescue home within a specified timeframe He takes up this challenge and faces more and more difficulties. Some help him and others make things worse. A fan of the movie Godfather, he is found quoting it here and there. There is a constant reference to the Collected works of Elizabeth von Arnim, which delves into dogs' lives, among other topics.
I found this novel rather confusing. It is set in a Venezuela plagued by poverty and corruption, and the stray dogs portray some aspect of it??
Did you know Tasseography is a fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, and even wine sediments? A part of the book talks about coffee reading, lucky, not lucky, danger, etc.
Although there are no stray dogs in Amsterdam, a very interesting point was made regarding the availability of bikes as cheap commodities, which are frequently stolen and discarded into the river. I never understood the relevance of this comparison. Perhaps the author was trying to compare the two countries, Venezuela and the Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam. So, are people in Venezuela heartlessly dumping dogs as opposed to the cycles in Amsterdam?!
I loved the huge dog Iros, a Leonberger. Did you know that the breed Leonbergers could weigh sixty to eighty kilos?
The translation is impeccable, and i didn't feel like i was reading a translated literature.
"SOMETIMES ONE SIMPLY DECIDES THAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT SUFFERING FOR ANOTHER PERSON. JUST LIKE THAT. AND ONLY DEATH, WHETHER THEIR OWN OR THAT OF THE OTHER PERSON, CAN BREAK THAT BOND."
I’m unclear about many aspects of the book. The ending was ambiguous, leaving me with a sense of lack of closure, and maybe that was intentional?!