Just finished pic-rel. Great book. Any other fiction authors as good as Marías is at synthesizing layers upon layers of tangents and digressions and forming a cohesive idea? It's like you're watching him slowly paint a portrait when you read him, and here he paints a nose, there an eye, you get the idea, until finally you get the whole picture, only you couldn't even tell it was supposed to be a portrait until it was completely finished.
>>24119488I picked this up at a bookstore a few months ago and read the opening pages where the girl commits suicide in the bathroom and the father runs in and covers her exposed breast as if the gaping wound in her chest weren't the bigger concern. Powerful image, it had me hooked from the beginning, but I had to leave it because I already had my next 4 months of reading planned out. tell me it gets better or stays as good.Also, you read it in English? My native languages are Spanish and French so I am bound, by pride and ability, to read these works in their original languages. Since I went to an American university, I often found myself at odds with the other kids at their having read some classic translation where the language is an approximation to the spirit of the work in accordance with the contemporaneity of the translator.I'd be talking about Chaucer in the original Middle English, and then I'd be talking about Rabelais and Cervantes with people who had only ever read it in the Putnam/Rutherford/Urquhart/Le Motteux translations. Jarring, but I'm always curious about how readers of translations approach the works of an author who is so much prided for their linguistical innovation in their original language. I tried reading the Manheim translation of Celine and found it dull and dry by comparison, but that might be a natural bias.
>>24119523>tell me it... stays as goodI'd say it does. It's probably the best book I've read since I finished Marianela, which was sometime early last year.>Also, you read it in English?Yeah, but I'll read it in Spanish eventually. I'm currently learning Spanish, and hoping to be able to read Sarmiento's Facundo comfortably by midyear, or perhaps El doctor Centeno. I have a feeling the latter will be a bit tougher, though.
>>24119488>here he paints a nose, there an eye, you get the idea, until finally you get the whole picturedid he relaly do this? post screenshot porfa
>>24119488give me an example of one of those digressions and the significance of it
>>24119488Was his final novel decent? What are his 3 best?>>24119523>the Manheim translation of Celine and found it dull and dry by comparison, but that might be a natural bias.He's definitely dry.
