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Years ago I told my children: “When I lie dying and am about to breathe out my last breath, then put one of Snow’s novels in my hand. I’ll start reading and I won’t die before I finish the book.”
From time to time I let myself fall into an armchair and cry out: “I’m dying” and they would scramble to the library to fetch me a Snow novel. It was all great fun.

It is years now since I read one of his best novels — certainly his best known — and I’m glad to say that I still like it, and that I’m still alive.
Snow is not regarded as one of the major writers, but I still feel that is unjust. He may be somewhat long-winded from time to time, but he really catches the imagination. And I believe that he achieved something extraordinary with his novel series Strangers and Brothers, of which The Masters is a part. In these eleven novels he not only discribes the assent of his main character, Lewis Eliot, into society, he also gives a fine portrait of life in England from the thirties to the seventies.
In this book, thirteen fellows of an unnamed college in Cambridge have to elect a new Master after the old one’s death. In a suberp way Snow describes the forming of parties, the enmities and friendships, the struggle for power in an enclosed society. I think it’s gripping.

More about CP Snow.

Manuel Rivas
Ella, maldita alma

Para mí, Manuel Rivas es uno de los escritores españoles más interesantes de hoy en día. Tengo que leer sus libros en castellano porque no domino el gallego pero estoy seguro de que no se pierde el sentido íntimo.
Conocí a Rivas por la lectura de su novela El lápiz del carpintero. Después he leído sus cuentos de ¿Qué me quieres, amor?

En los agradecimientos Manuel Rivas escribe: “En memoria de mi madre, Carmiña, a quien había prometido un libro sobre las formas y los lugares del alma.” En Wikipedia se define: “el alma, de acuerdo con muchas tradiciones religiosas y filosóficas, es una sustancia etérea particular que se encuentra en los seres vivos. En ésas tradiciones, el alma incorpora la esencia interna de cada uno de esos seres vivos.”

Para Rivas la esencia de un ser vivo puede enfocarse en una guitarra, una barra de pan, un loro anarquista, un enjambre de abejas. En estos cuentos Rivas busca con delicadeza lo esencial de hombres y mujeres cotidianos. Son cuentos intimistas, graciosos, divertidos. Me gustan mucho. Quería compararles a los cuentos de un otro cuentista de fama: el irlandés William Trevor.
A ver qué presenta su última novela Los libros arden mal.

To the wedding
John Berger

At the back of this book Michael Ondaatje is quoted: “Wherever I go in the world I will have this book with me.” Perhaps this is somewhat exaggerated. If I were to carry around all the books I love, I’d have to buy a heavy duty mobilhome…

Anyway, it doesn’t surprise that Ondaatje may have said this because this book has the same poetic quality and sensitivity as his marvelous novel The English Patient.

A father is on holiday in Greece with his daughter where he buys a charm for his daughter from a blind man. From that moment on the blind man ‘smells’ or senses the story. In stead of the all-knowing writer an all-feeling blind man unravels the tale of a father, a mother, their daughter, her lover, etc, all traveling in separate ways and in their own time to a wedding in Italy. The wedding is a tragic one because the daughter has Aids and won’t have much longer to live.

The writer of About Looking really has his own way of looking at people and what happens between them. For me this was a fine experience. Some time ago I was hesitating to buy Pig Earth, now I surely will.

→ John Berger