You ever have the feeling that the person you're talking to is either completely insane or weirdly brilliant? This ambiguity is often cleared up when you find out just how high they are (so high right now, dude), but every once in a while there's always that hobo who seems like he has a much better idea of what's actually going on than you do, and he looks perfectly thrilled right where he is.
That's kind of how I feel about the main character. He's constantly running from event to event, plucking with strings that seem to connect them but don't, only to find out later there's a thick web of cable supporting the whole enterprise. The only cogent summary I can offer is "lonely guy starts to meet the world, except the world is full of all the people you've actually met and try to pretend you're not friends (with even though you hang out with that guy all the time)."

Reading this book feels like trying to navigate the stairs when you're drunk. Not like just trying to clamber your way down the concrete steps outside the dance bar in the middle of February, where you feel warm (because liquor) but there's a thick sheet of ice coating the left half of the stairs, and you're seizing the railing like you're onboard the Titanic trying to fight your way past some Irish dudes to the bow before it slips and carries you down into the North Atlantic. More like the first time you ever had alcohol and you managed to put away two Zimas and you were walking down an extremely narrow, steeply sloped staircase and you slipped a little bit and your arm automatically went out to try to stabilize yourself and you wound up putting your elbow through the wall?

Except it's more of a love story. ( )

Hmmm....challenging one to quantify and explain. It is heartwarming, but deceptive: such a small book has a lot of depth and philosophy in it. It's very "meta" and I'm not sure I understood the half of it, but it was an enjoyable read. The name of the book is actually the name of a chapter the main character, Samuel de Juan is writing, but simultaneously living. He explains this to his love interest from childhood, Gabriela, whom he is currently trying to win and woo after meeting up with her randomly: [love in lowercase is] when some small act of kindness sets off a chain of events that comes around again the the form of multiplied love. Then, even if you want to return to where you started, it's too late, because this love in lowercase has wiped away all traces of the path back to where you were before." (161). See what I mean? The book is quirky and clever and the most straightforward way to explain the narrative line is that Samuel leads a pretty solitary existence until a cat, (whom he names Mishima) wanders into his apartment and sparks off a chain reaction of introducing him to various other typically solitary characters: Titus, the gruff old man from upstairs is an editor and a closet philosopher and learning of Samuel's role as an academic teaching German literature at a Spanish university, he ropes him into completing the book mentioned above. An errand for Titus is what puts Gabriela in Samuel's path and in staking out a spot to try to find her again, Samuel befriends Valdemar a paranoid physicist who has written a treatise on the moon. In meeting Valdemar consistently at a cafe, Samuel observes and eventually meets Ruben an engineer vacationing in Spain. Underlying all these serendipitous meetings is the idea that things happen for a reason, and the trick is to keep reading to find out. ( )

This book wasn't really what I thought it was going to be at all. From the cover and synopsis, I was expecting something similar to The Rosie Project, which I had a lot of fun reading. It wasn't that at all, really--and that's not to say that it wasn't good, just extremely different than I'd thought it would be.

I don't think that the plot, really, is the most important/noteworthy element of the book. (My attempt at a single-sentence "plot" summary is the following: The main character, a thirty-seven-year-old literature professor, wanders around Barcelona, talking a bit about literature and philosophy (especially German literature) and meets a cat and some pretty weird people.) What struck me much more about this book was the general atmosphere. It's very dream-like in a way, a bit fanciful, and laden with various references to literature/philosophy. In that way, it reminded me somewhat of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. (Because of that connection, I'm a little curious about to what extent the translation of the book affected it.)

Definitely not a bad book, but not really what the synopsis makes it out to be. ( )

You ever have the feeling that the person you're talking to is either completely insane or weirdly brilliant? This ambiguity is often cleared up when you find out just how high they are (so high right now, dude), but every once in a while there's always that hobo who seems like he has a much better idea of what's actually going on than you do, and he looks perfectly thrilled right where he is.
That's kind of how I feel about the main character. He's constantly running from event to event, plucking with strings that seem to connect them but don't, only to find out later there's a thick web of cable supporting the whole enterprise. The only cogent summary I can offer is "lonely guy starts to meet the world, except the world is full of all the people you've actually met and try to pretend you're not friends (with even though you hang out with that guy all the time)."

Reading this book feels like trying to navigate the stairs when you're drunk. Not like just trying to clamber your way down the concrete steps outside the dance bar in the middle of February, where you feel warm (because liquor) but there's a thick sheet of ice coating the left half of the stairs, and you're seizing the railing like you're onboard the Titanic trying to fight your way past some Irish dudes to the bow before it slips and carries you down into the North Atlantic. More like the first time you ever had alcohol and you managed to put away two Zimas and you were walking down an extremely narrow, steeply sloped staircase and you slipped a little bit and your arm automatically went out to try to stabilize yourself and you wound up putting your elbow through the wall?

Except it's more of a love story. ( )