A review by emma_ireland
Three Horses by Erri De Luca
5.0
"I take the book stopped at a fold, deliver myself to its pace, to the breathing of the other storyteller. If I am someone else, it's also because books move men more than journeys and years."
This book is so beautifully written that I stopped every other page to note down lines and passages that I couldn't bear to never read again. It's a short book, but one that feels as though it carries the weight of the world between its pages.
The story is of a gardener who falls in love, bringing back memories of his past in Argentina's Dirty War and his first love who was murdered there. However, the joy of this book truly is the writing itself. At one point, De Luca writes: "This is what books should do: Carry a person and not be carried by him; take the day off his back, not add its own ounces of paper to his vertebrae." Three Horses definitely added its own ounces of paper to my vertebrae, and more besides, but it's a burden worth carrying.
The only thing I didn't love about Three Horses was the way the elegance of the prose in general slipped into the dialogue between the characters. As enjoyable as it is to read, it's not believable that people would speak to each other that way, and certainly not every person the main character came into contact with. But it's a small complaint for such a wonderful book.
This book is so beautifully written that I stopped every other page to note down lines and passages that I couldn't bear to never read again. It's a short book, but one that feels as though it carries the weight of the world between its pages.
The story is of a gardener who falls in love, bringing back memories of his past in Argentina's Dirty War and his first love who was murdered there. However, the joy of this book truly is the writing itself. At one point, De Luca writes: "This is what books should do: Carry a person and not be carried by him; take the day off his back, not add its own ounces of paper to his vertebrae." Three Horses definitely added its own ounces of paper to my vertebrae, and more besides, but it's a burden worth carrying.
The only thing I didn't love about Three Horses was the way the elegance of the prose in general slipped into the dialogue between the characters. As enjoyable as it is to read, it's not believable that people would speak to each other that way, and certainly not every person the main character came into contact with. But it's a small complaint for such a wonderful book.