★★★★☆ Deniably magic fun from Allende

Los amantes del Guggenheim

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is, I think, my favorite Spanish-language author, and one of my favorite authors full-stop. La casa de los espíritus is a great work of Magical Realism, better even than Cien Anos De Soledad in my personal opinion. Thus I was delighted to learn of the existence of this story. I was taken aback to find that it is not for sale in Spanish anywhere that I could find, although Amazon will sell you an English translation by Allende herself under the title Lovers at the Museum. However, it was easy to find free downloads of the Spanish booklet, e.g. here.

The Museum referred to in the title is the Guggenheim Bilbao. One morning when the museum opens two lovers are found inside, a naked young man, Pedro Berastegui, and a young woman, Elena Etxebarría, in a bridal gown. (The names in the English version are different.) She is questioned by Detective Larramendi

—¿ Por qué ibas vestida de novia? —la interrogó Aitor Larramendi.
—Porque no tuve tiempo de cambiarme.
—¿ Dónde se casaron?
—¿ Quiénes?

—Why are you wearing a wedding dress? Aitor Larramendi asked her.
—Because I didn't have time to change.
—Where was the wedding?
—Whose wedding?

It transpires that Elena and Pedro spent the night in the museum doing you-know-what, and that no one noticed. Even the security cameras have no record of them. It is just barely possible, if you really really want, to imagine that nothing magical happened -- that the guards were negligent and that there were unexplained electronic faults. But of course you're not going to believe that. This was a lot of fun.

The Spanish booklet but not the English translation follows the story with an essay called "El oficio de contar", which Google translate will tell you means "The job of counting". That is a mistranslation. The Spanish verb "contar" does mean "count", but it is also the verb used for telling a story. (The English verb "tell" also means "count" -- it is rarely used in that sense now, but that is why the person who counts out money at the bank is called a teller.) The essay tells how Allende became an author and what story-telling means to her.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

Saga, Volume 4 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) If you're like me, your first question on seeing Saga, Volume 4 is, "Who is that woman on the cover?" That, my dear friend, is Alana. About halfway through Volume 3 Alana and Marko had a brief conversation about The Circuit, which is a performance venue of some kind that people can tune into with a virtual reality helmet. Before she became a soldier, Alana harbored ambitions of performing on the Circuit. Now that their lethal pursuit has been temporarily distracted or put out of commission, they're focused on making some kind of living. Marko encouraged her to audition. So now Alana is performing on the Circuit, and what you see on the cover is her bewigged with wings bound and hidden in order to perform. She's the family breadwinner. Marko is a househusband, staying home and taking care of Hazel. The Marko-Alana-Hazel story in this volume is a bit dull. Without giving away any spoilers, it's kin...

★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

Power Jeffrey Pfeffer I read this eleven years ago (21-Sep-2011). At the time, I wrote this brief note to myself: Based on the first chapter or two, a singularly repulsive little book. It's basically "Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition". Amazon review Goodreads review

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance The True History of Chocolate , A Perfect Red , or A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals because I thought they were books in this vein, and The Omnivore's Dilemma was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed. The Omnivore's Dilemma does indeed contain fascinating information a...

★★★☆☆ Drivel with occasional brilliance

Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake I have to begin with a disclaimer. Usually I read poetry very slowly, one or two poems a day. This gives me the time to savor it. However, I had surgery two days ago and brought William Blake 's Songs of Innocence and Experience along to read while waiting for the surgeons to slice me open. It is possible that these are not the best conditions for appreciating Blake . With that caveat, I was more disappointed than pleased by this volume of poetry. It consists mostly of drivel like this: When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliance like this O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. or this The human d...

★★★★☆ Courage and principle, betrayed by history

Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South Elizabeth R Varon My first knowledge of Confederate general James Longstreet came as a result of reading Michael Shaara 's splendid historical novel The Killer Angels , which Elizabeth Varon , in Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South describes thus A finely grained fictional account of the Gettysburg campaign, the book conjured the strained relationship of Longstreet and Lee, casting Longstreet as a prescient pragmatist oriented toward the future, who symbolized modern warfare, and Lee as the prideful romantic, backward-looking and resigned to fate. Why had I never heard of Longstreet? Because the USA doesn't want to remember him. At the end of the Civil War, Longstreet, unlike the huge majority of Confederate officers, accepted defeat. Longstreet was a great friend of Union general Ulysses S Grant, and he was inspired by Grant's generosity in victory to behave in such a way as to d...

★★★☆☆ What is it like to be an octopus?

Children of Ruin Adrian Tchaikovsky There is a famous essay called What is it like to be a Bat? / Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein? by philosopher Thomas Nagel . (Although I am not a philosopher, I am a neuroscientist, and as a neuroscientist it is almost impossible to avoid knowing a little of the nonsense philosophers think about how minds work.) Nagel attempts to make an argument about consciousness. He argues that the consciousness of a bat is an experience a human cannot possibly have or understand, because echolocation is so unhuman. I have a little fantasy about Adrian Tchaikovsky 's Children of Time series . I imagine he read Nagel 's effusion and said to himself, "Utter nonsense! I'm gonna show that I can imagine not only what it's like to be a bat, but even what it's like to be a spider or an octopus!" ( Nagel in fact raises the question of invertebrate experience in his essay, only to make the point that it is an even h...

★★★☆☆ Good-bye Earl, or Small powers do great things

Nettle & Bone T Kingfisher I believe the first T. Kingfisher book I ever read was A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking , and the second Minor Mage . (I had, however, read some of her middle grade works published as Ursula Vernon , and I was aware that Kingfisher and Vernon are the same person.) Nettle & Bone feels to me very like those two novels, but with a little of the joy let out. Both A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking (irresistible title!) and Minor Mage feature child wizards with very limited powers who are called on to do far more than anyone has a right to expect of them, and who rise to the challenge. The first quarter of Nettle & Bone is exceedingly grim. It's the all-too-familiar story of a wife suffering, as the publisher's summary says, "at the hands of a powerful and abusive" husband. She's a princess and he's a prince, but that matters only in that it accen...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up Dave Barry There is one living human who can write prose that makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe. That person is Tactical Assault Clown Dave Barry . Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up had that effect on me at least twice -- an automatic five-star rating. ("Tactical Assault Clown" is right up there with "Combat Epistemologist" ( The Jennifer Morgue ) on my list of creative military specializations. And if you're one of those people who get their knickers all in a twist when someone uses parens inside of parens, you know what you can do about it.) (Yes, I know I'm not funny.) It's not all ROFL funny. In fact, he tells about his father's alcoholism ( that story has a happy ending ) and his mother's suicide ( that one obviously does not ). Later in the book he tries to convince us that his real li...

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning David Copperfield . If you have read David Copperfield at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read Demon Copperhead . (I last read David Copperfield when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of David Copperfield on finishing Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★★★☆☆ Lacking the common touch

100 Selected Poems: John Keats John Keats Well, that was disappointing. I am ready to admit that this is an "It's not you -- it's me," case. Since I suspect that some other readers, even readers who love poetry, may likewise find Keats disappointing, I will try to explain why he disappointed me. Thus you can judge whether you, too, might suffer the same fate. First thing to say is that the young John Keats was not really that great a poet. (By "young", I mean up to and including Endymion .) That, of course, is a judgment many readers will disagree with, but don't discount it! It was Keats 's own judgment. In his preface to Endymion , he says "I apologize for the lousy work, but I just had to get this out of my system." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.) You may dismiss that as false modesty, but I am more inclined to accept it as the judgment of a man who knew what he was talking about, especially because the quality of his poetry abr...

Search This Blog