Date: July 21, 2014
Present: Nic, Gill, Jane, Shubha, Jen
Jane is a GGM super-fan having devoured everything he wrote and loved this as much (almost) as everything else. Jen and I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera so were looking forward to this.
Generally, this seemed to be considered a little less accessible, a little less "fantastic" than other of his novels and it was, therefore, a little harder to cope with the unacceptable sexual relationship between child and old man. Of course, everything has to be placed in a context and the age of consent has varied over time and still varies between societies with the increasing age of consent at odds with natural fertility. But it is a complex and difficult topic, as was the subject matter of the book. Did we imagine the writing was a little less lyrical (albeit hard to make the judgment in a translation) or was it because we were battling a distaste for the subject matter?
An interesting but not entirely enjoyable novel - however we'd all read more by GGM.
No comments:
Post a Comment