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Hello! I m a Falkirk, UK-based physicist and book lover. I m not sure why I need an eBay profile but if you are reading it I guess that it is a good thing. Feel free to contact me about any of my listings.
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Reviews (5)
15 January 2017
Fascinating but a little disturbing
The Feast of The Goat is a piece of historical fiction by Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, which is about Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, aka Trujillo, aka The Goat, aka El Jefe.
This Trujillo character was a soldier turned politician who ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. His rule was a dictatorship driven by a cult of personality and the thirty years he had in power, known as the Trujillo Era is considered one of the bloodiest periods ever in the Americas.
The story follows the daughter of one of Trujillo's right hand men, Uranita, as she returns to the Dominican Republic as a grown woman, many years after Trujillo's assassination. It also follows the band of men who become his assassins, as well as Trujillo himself, in his final few weeks. This sequential rotation of character viewpoints, spanning across the decades, is some of the most elegant writing I've ever come across. The structure is wonderful.
Unfortunately, I still can't quite say that I enjoyed the book. The first two thirds feel extremely slowly paced and the eventual reveals (that I won't spoil here) seemed entirely predictable. Although it did make me want to know more about the Trujillo era it also had the effect of putting me off actively seeking it out. If someone made a good documentary, I'd watch it, but if I have to resort to Wikipedia it's not happening.
In the final third of the book things finally seemed to get going. As beautiful as all the previous scene-setting is, I didn't feel like it was necessary and it was frustrating to wade through. Now that there was finally some action it all happened awfully fast. Except for the punishments of the assassins, which spanned slightly more than two chapters, were revolting, and rather laboured the point. More than once I had to stop and ask myself, "why am I reading this?" I'm still not sure I have an answer.
To be fair, some of the characters were very well written. I particularly enjoyed how Vargas Llosa got into Trujillo's head and studied his idiosyncrasies, his mania and his hypocrisy. Surely, it can't be easy to write from the point of view of a brutal dictator but this is done in such a way that, while I always hated Trujillo, sometimes I pitied him too. Similarly, the descriptions of some of his cronies are down right Dickensian, but are more modern, more brutal and more vulgar.
Perhaps it's just not the kind of book that you're supposed to enjoy. Perhaps enjoying the story of the Trujillo era would be somehow wrong. Probably. Or, perhaps it's one of those books that you get more out of when you return to it and re-read it years later. Maybe I will, just to see, but it won't be for a fair few years yet.
10 November 2012
I would have this phone over any upgrade my supplier can currently offer me
I had an HTC Desire S and it was stolen. I liked it so much that I replaced it with the exact same model.
A smartphone should fit in my hand or my pocket. It should have an SD card slot, but also enough internal memory that I don't need to constant transfer things to the card. It should last for just over 24 hours with average use. So this phone is perfect in those respects.
It's a shame it won't be upgraded to the new Android OS, but otherwise it's the best I could hope for.
15 January 2017
Possibly the best book I read in 2016
Oh my word this might be the best book I've read this year. There's a lot of strong contenders for that particular superlative but this was a really good read. Its got that blend of almost sci-fi with folk law and legend that's just perfect for building a world. This world in particular is almost entirely covered in ocean, with drowned cities beneath and only a few small islands remaining. There's some vague suggestion that it might be the result of a huge global warming event that occurred some generations ago although that's far from clear.
People who can afford to live on the small scraps of land, "land lockers" enjoy slightly superior status above those who have resorted to living on boats, "damplings." However, life is a struggle for everyone. None less so than for a woman, North, who lives on a circus boat with her dancing bear. None less so than for another woman, Callanish, who lives on a tiny island in the doldrums, condemned to a life as a "Gracekeeper" and "resting" those who died at sea.
It's tense and soulful and oh, so compelling and, while I normally shy away from series of books these days, if a sequel about North and Callanish were ever released I'd be first in line to buy a copy. There's no hint that such a book will ever be written so I'll just have to go back and read Logan's short stories instead.