Stodgy and boring

Certainly, it seems that painting and tribulations associated with certain paintings have become powerful inspiration romantic reasons in recent years. We have been entitled, among others, the formidable "Goldfinch" Donna Tartt, the recent and fascinating "Les Flamboyants" Siri Husqvedt at "Turquetto" Metin Arditi to name a literary successes achieved.

Leonardo Padura, Cuban author specializing in the thriller, sempare turn this theme and brush around a canvas of Rembrandt a strange novel that will pack some or leave other widely disenchanted readers. The only formulation of the remarks you will probably realize that I am clearly in the second category despite the power that characterizes, in some ways this novel. Specifically, it can sinterroger if the ambition of this novel is not as what the dessert the most.

Calling his favorite character to the rescue, Mario Conde, a former cop turned into private libraries Surveyor looking douvrages rare and can pay big, adulterated rum enthusiast, good food, faithful in friendship and love, Leonardo Padura launches on canvas of a small traces of Rembrandt.

A canvas arrival in Cuba in 1939, an Exchange board as currency by a family belonging to this small thousand German Jews managed to buy the opportunity to leave Nazi lAllemagne before it is too late. Unfortunately for them, the ship was refused permission to land its passengers, victims dodieux blackmail and bargaining, and compel to return to its original harbor in Hamburg thus giving the opportunity to a crazy dream to send the unhappy regime that the United States and Canada had daccueillir also declined, to the death camps. A painting that emerges almost seventy years later during dune attempted sale blocked by the last copyright holder who then went to Cuba to ask Conde help him prove that he is the rightful owner and injured.

On this basis, Leonardo Padura developing a highly complex built in a mixture of genres that not narrange things. To read the introductory note, it is understood that its purpose is to show us that heretics, as that he has chosen to give to his work, are all those and all those who at one time or another, have rebelled against the order established against the rules, usually, serve Quà hide dintérêts defense and davantages by caste in power at the expense of all others.

But was it necessary to concoct as three very distinct parts, very too long and written, at least for the first two, in a challenging style, unnatural and repulsive? Padura One feels the sentence with its subject and as obliged den do too, masking the background by the complexity of the form.

The first part takes us to Cuba between 1939 and 2007, giving rise to various considerations on local policies wanderings since the Revolution that saw Castro uninstall commands, narration of a very glorious historical event related to the delivery of the ship ferrying its cargo of Jews earthen quest Dasile quun and early reflections on the dark cryptic debates incessantly agitate the Talmudic rabbis and other experts engaged by any layman does not know and does not care or even remotely. From where Loverdose which watches

Without transition, the second part takes us around 1650 in Amsterdam in the workshop of Rembrandt and stretches galore, nagging manner on lintransigeance increasingly significant teachers of the Hebrew law in the interpretation of dogma and the excesses and misfortunes quune radical vision will not miss dengendrer.

The third takes us back to Cuba in 2007 and turns into a thriller around a band demos, one of the many young urban congregations seeking a meaning to his life by asking dress codes, social, verbal, which stand out the way some of their peers and relatives that they reject.

Leonardo Padura, a skilful writer, finally put all the pieces of a huge puzzle and we need to recognize it some genius in the quality of the literary and intellectual construction. This is indeed a great dhérrétiques cohort of all kinds we have seen struggle and us, plowing through a grueling and tedious novel.

For compile in one pad a historical novel well-documented, religious and dogmatic analysis made countless ratiocinations and contemporary detective novel does not result in the production of a great novel. Instead, the reader is so discouraged by dinterminables digressions and a text that deserved countless cuts and simplifications that it fails to take his legs to his neck and leave plan which nevertheless result of a remarkable work of research and construction. It is hardly understandable that it could have been selected to compete in the price of booksellers Seine

Published by Editions Métailié 2014 605 (endless) pages

Find my reading notes on thierrycollet-cetalir.blogspot.com