little_big_bookshelf's review against another edition
1.0
No le doy menos porque no se puede.
No me gusta nada del libro, me parece que de alarga de manera innecesaria para demostrar los conocimientos del autor sobre el tema.
La historia principal (la historia dentro de la historia) está bien pero no así desarrollada.
Reconozco, sin embargo, que la manera de dejar el final es novedosa e invita conversaciones.
No me gusta nada del libro, me parece que de alarga de manera innecesaria para demostrar los conocimientos del autor sobre el tema.
La historia principal (la historia dentro de la historia) está bien pero no así desarrollada.
Reconozco, sin embargo, que la manera de dejar el final es novedosa e invita conversaciones.
hollyhobbit101's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
aaalmaaa's review against another edition
5.0
Ecriture : honnête, authentique, pas fausse, il ne construit pas une façade labellisée d'écrivain.
Transformation d'un phalangiste (Sanchez Mazas) en un tout autre homme qui va au-delà du simple partisan.
Partie 3 m'a tenu en haleine, fin magistrale (aidée par l'écoute de musique épique...)
Quand Bolaño dit : "un escritor no necesita imaginación, sino memoria" --> C'est tout à fait juste dans le cas de Javier Cercas. Il a soit une mémoire extraordinaire, soit son récit est faussement réaliste, et dans ce cas c'est un "mentiroso redomado" (Mirellas) pour réussir ainsi à coudre les restes de sa mémoire et inventer/ combler les blancs de sa mémoire avec talent.
Je l'ai lu pour la première fois en 4ème. Je n'avais pas du tout aimé puisque je m'attendais à des héros nobles, épiques. Ma mémoire de cette lecture était assez négative puisque je m'attendais à tout autre chose. (et j'ai remarqué que le souvenir de ma perception du temps du roman était complètement erronée). Maintenant, j'ai pu beaucoup plus apprécier ce livre. Bien que j'ai pris assez peu de plaisir à en lire la langue.
La particularité de ce roman est que les protagonistes ne sont jamais ceux que l'ont croit et se dévoilent lentement. Ils n'apparaissent pas tous au début. Tous les personnages ont une utilité, tous sont dotés d'un caractère à soi, aucun n'est magnifié, aucun n'est parfait. Au contraire, ils sont intéressants dans leurs défauts. Très beau livre hommage à Mirellas et ses amis. Tous les personnages paraissent indéniablement humains.
Transformation d'un phalangiste (Sanchez Mazas) en un tout autre homme qui va au-delà du simple partisan.
Partie 3 m'a tenu en haleine, fin magistrale (aidée par l'écoute de musique épique...)
Quand Bolaño dit : "un escritor no necesita imaginación, sino memoria" --> C'est tout à fait juste dans le cas de Javier Cercas. Il a soit une mémoire extraordinaire, soit son récit est faussement réaliste, et dans ce cas c'est un "mentiroso redomado" (Mirellas) pour réussir ainsi à coudre les restes de sa mémoire et inventer/ combler les blancs de sa mémoire avec talent.
Je l'ai lu pour la première fois en 4ème. Je n'avais pas du tout aimé puisque je m'attendais à des héros nobles, épiques. Ma mémoire de cette lecture était assez négative puisque je m'attendais à tout autre chose. (et j'ai remarqué que le souvenir de ma perception du temps du roman était complètement erronée). Maintenant, j'ai pu beaucoup plus apprécier ce livre. Bien que j'ai pris assez peu de plaisir à en lire la langue.
La particularité de ce roman est que les protagonistes ne sont jamais ceux que l'ont croit et se dévoilent lentement. Ils n'apparaissent pas tous au début. Tous les personnages ont une utilité, tous sont dotés d'un caractère à soi, aucun n'est magnifié, aucun n'est parfait. Au contraire, ils sont intéressants dans leurs défauts. Très beau livre hommage à Mirellas et ses amis. Tous les personnages paraissent indéniablement humains.
engelsthecat's review against another edition
5.0
An interesting mix of historical fiction and auto-fiction unlike anything I have read before.
pedrosberni's review against another edition
5.0
Excelente!
Velocidade da luz continua sendo meu livro favorito do autor.
No entanto, Soldados de Salamina traz ares espanhóis/latinos com mais contundência e mantém a inconfundível metalinguagem que consagra o autor.
Velocidade da luz continua sendo meu livro favorito do autor.
No entanto, Soldados de Salamina traz ares espanhóis/latinos com mais contundência e mantém a inconfundível metalinguagem que consagra o autor.
underthesea's review against another edition
5.0
There is a sense of disappointment to Spain after the crisis. It is poor again and torn apart again, as if prosperity, development, science at its European level and a common national project, had been an illusion; and the awakening led not to a new reality, but to the one that had always been at the heart of this country, that of Gil de Biedma's bleak poem that Cercas quotes so many times:
(I beg forgiveness to anyone who might read this, but the translations are mine. And I have a shitty ear for poetry)
Of all stories in History
The saddest must be Spain's
Because it ends badly. As if humankind
sick of fighting its demons
had entrusted them with goverment
and the administration of poverty.
One must understand that this is the vision of the country that has been at the heart of its left: "A Spain who prays and charges when it bothers to use its head", "So brute as to be spanish", as Cercas quotes. Apparently, Hemingway described it in a letter as "the last good country left" ("what a clown!" is our hero's opinion of him)- despite its somewhat usurped image of sunny vacation land and a rich but overrepresented light-hearted literary tradition, it has been very sad.
After the IIWW and after a healthy lapse for various vendettas, peace returned to Europe; Spain's left was left (sorry) to write this sort of heart-wrenching poetry:
Bitter are the days
of life, living
only a long wait
fed by memories
One day, free at last
from all their lies
you'll look for me then
but what can a dead man say?
And sure enough, Cernuda died in Mexico, exiled. Have you listened to "Suspiros de España" while reading the ending of Soldados de Salamina? Do it again if you haven't, and cry. I'll helpfully include a bit of the lyrics:
Oh deadly pain
because I go away from you, Spain
Why am I torn from my rose bush?
Oh mother mine
Oh how I wish I could
be light of day
and as day dawns
be reborn over Spain
Another of the greats, Machado, died in France. He had before the war written these loving words:
Spain of marching band and tambourine,
bull paddock and sacristy,
Fervid for Frascuelo and Mary,
Of mocking mind and a dull soul,
Must have its marble and its day,
Its infallible tomorrow and its poet.
Or perhaps it is just me, baffled by today's conversations of and deeply unconfortable with nationalisms, also in the left, as a matter of fact, especially in the left.
....
Anyway, I was speaking about Soldados de Salamina. I have read comparatively very little spanish literature, perhaps for the reasons stated above, and perhaps only as an heritage of kid's books here sucking, due to the influence of religious schools (sadly the main trendsetters in that editorial sector). Good morals kill good stories. But I'm disgressing again.
Soldados contains the portrayal of a warmonger who happened to be a coward, and through him an attempt to understand Falange. Its theorizes around the importance of poets in a war, and through that becomes interested in the concept of heroism. It contains the caricature of a woman (that happens to be fairly funny) and the loving portrayal of a man (the hero!) who smuggles whisky and cigarrettes in the retirement home where he lives, old, sick, and alone. It has a remarkable ending, a crescendo built on all of that underlying sadness (exiles, strokes, failed writers, vulgar girlfriends), not unlike the communion shared by Miralles and Bolaño, like laughter at a funeral. Building up for it, moments of joy (almost always stolen) pepper the book: lightly started with knickerless Conchi, and then all the dances- the paso doble danced with a rifle, the paso doble danced with a whore, and the paso doble danced with a nun. To be simple, the book was very good and I loved it.
(I beg forgiveness to anyone who might read this, but the translations are mine. And I have a shitty ear for poetry)
Of all stories in History
The saddest must be Spain's
Because it ends badly. As if humankind
sick of fighting its demons
had entrusted them with goverment
and the administration of poverty.
One must understand that this is the vision of the country that has been at the heart of its left: "A Spain who prays and charges when it bothers to use its head", "So brute as to be spanish", as Cercas quotes. Apparently, Hemingway described it in a letter as "the last good country left" ("what a clown!" is our hero's opinion of him)- despite its somewhat usurped image of sunny vacation land and a rich but overrepresented light-hearted literary tradition, it has been very sad.
After the IIWW and after a healthy lapse for various vendettas, peace returned to Europe; Spain's left was left (sorry) to write this sort of heart-wrenching poetry:
Bitter are the days
of life, living
only a long wait
fed by memories
One day, free at last
from all their lies
you'll look for me then
but what can a dead man say?
And sure enough, Cernuda died in Mexico, exiled. Have you listened to "Suspiros de España" while reading the ending of Soldados de Salamina? Do it again if you haven't, and cry. I'll helpfully include a bit of the lyrics:
Oh deadly pain
because I go away from you, Spain
Why am I torn from my rose bush?
Oh mother mine
Oh how I wish I could
be light of day
and as day dawns
be reborn over Spain
Another of the greats, Machado, died in France. He had before the war written these loving words:
Spain of marching band and tambourine,
bull paddock and sacristy,
Fervid for Frascuelo and Mary,
Of mocking mind and a dull soul,
Must have its marble and its day,
Its infallible tomorrow and its poet.
Or perhaps it is just me, baffled by today's conversations of and deeply unconfortable with nationalisms, also in the left, as a matter of fact, especially in the left.
....
Anyway, I was speaking about Soldados de Salamina. I have read comparatively very little spanish literature, perhaps for the reasons stated above, and perhaps only as an heritage of kid's books here sucking, due to the influence of religious schools (sadly the main trendsetters in that editorial sector). Good morals kill good stories. But I'm disgressing again.
Soldados contains the portrayal of a warmonger who happened to be a coward, and through him an attempt to understand Falange. Its theorizes around the importance of poets in a war, and through that becomes interested in the concept of heroism. It contains the caricature of a woman (that happens to be fairly funny) and the loving portrayal of a man (the hero!) who smuggles whisky and cigarrettes in the retirement home where he lives, old, sick, and alone. It has a remarkable ending, a crescendo built on all of that underlying sadness (exiles, strokes, failed writers, vulgar girlfriends), not unlike the communion shared by Miralles and Bolaño, like laughter at a funeral. Building up for it, moments of joy (almost always stolen) pepper the book: lightly started with knickerless Conchi, and then all the dances- the paso doble danced with a rifle, the paso doble danced with a whore, and the paso doble danced with a nun. To be simple, the book was very good and I loved it.
qdony's review against another edition
5.0
Més enllà de qualsevol altra consideració de natura estètica, aquest és un dels millors exemples que he trobat de les qualitats redemptores de la literatura. És una història que conmou de manera extranya, fugint de bons i de dolents i trista perquè està enmarcada en una història, la d'Espanya, que "va acabar malament". S'arrapa a l'ànima i la deixa marcada.
sarahlobster's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.25
ida05's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0