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Mundo maravilloso
El año es 1978. El lugar es Camber Sands, Inglaterra. Lorenzo Giraut es un hombre que no se acerca a las ventanas. Que sabe muy bien que no debe acercarse a las ventanas. Pero ¿de qué sirven las precauciones cuando la vida de uno es un recuerdo sacado de los sueños de su hijo? Hay relámpagos en la noche. Sirenas de policía. Poco después estalla una bomba en una casa que se llama como un célebre disco de la banda Pink Floyd. Los culpables nunca serán encontrados.
El año es 2006. El lugar son las oficinas barcelonesas de Lorenzo Giraut, S.L. En el despacho paterno, sin ventanas, Lucas Giraut recibe al señor Bocanegra. Propietario de la sala de fiestas El Lado Oscuro de la Luna. Propietario de abrigos inquietantemente femeninos. Y todo empieza otra vez.
La historia de Camber Sands. Una historia de tres hermanos -el Club No Nos Gusta el Sol- que no eran hermanos. Una historia de hijos sin padres. De madres facialmente reconstruidas para no mostrar ninguna emoción. De niñas sin amigos que son las Principales Expertas Europeas en la Obra de Stephen King. Y, por supuesto, de traiciones y robos a medianoche.
El año es 2006. El lugar son las oficinas barcelonesas de Lorenzo Giraut, S.L. En el despacho paterno, sin ventanas, Lucas Giraut recibe al señor Bocanegra. Propietario de la sala de fiestas El Lado Oscuro de la Luna. Propietario de abrigos inquietantemente femeninos. Y todo empieza otra vez.
La historia de Camber Sands. Una historia de tres hermanos -el Club No Nos Gusta el Sol- que no eran hermanos. Una historia de hijos sin padres. De madres facialmente reconstruidas para no mostrar ninguna emoción. De niñas sin amigos que son las Principales Expertas Europeas en la Obra de Stephen King. Y, por supuesto, de traiciones y robos a medianoche.
550 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
8 people are currently reading
427 people want to read
About the author
Javier Calvo
179 books173 followersAlso known as Javier Calvo Perales. Javier Calvo graduated in journalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and studied comparative literature at Pompeu Fabra University. His first short-story compilation, Risas enlatadas (Canned Laughs, 2001), shows stylistic elements that differ extremely from those of contemporary Spanish narrative: sampling or movie snippets, manipulated quotes of other texts, compressed plots from other novels and an "open" conception of narration, taken from Free Cinema and the montage techniques of filmmakers such as Jean Eustache or John Cassavetes. Other influences, recognizable in this book are the English novel and the audiovisual world of cinema and television, with many of his short stories using the world of television as a theme.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 6, 2009
"Pulp Fiction" meets "Un Chien Andalou" with Pink Floyd spun throughout. Sex, drug, rock and roll, art theft, Barcelona and Stephen King all rolled into almost 500 pages. What more could you want. Very cinematic read - you can easily tell the author writes screenplay. You very much are picturing who could be cast in the film version as you are reading it which is fun in itself. A cast of characters would be an understatement. Good vacation book but I thought the ending a bit predictable.
July 23, 2014
Wonderful indeed :) The book I mean, not the its world which is a kind of a darkly funny one; the book has a very cinematic feel and it reminded me a bit of Pulp Fiction the movie in themes, though do not expect a precise comparison
I just loved it - unexpectedly so for me based on subject, but when I opened it at the bookstore I knew I needed to get it *that day* and so I did...
October 16, 2011
(Re-posted from http://theturnedbrain.blogspot.com)
I have a long list of books I want to buy. A long, long list. And with such a long list it’s hard to keep track of exactly why I wanted to buy each book in the first place. Some of them I may have read a one line summery of and thought it sounded cool, or it might just be that the book has a truly excellent cover, or maybe I’m adding books to the list in my sleep... My point is there are a good number of books on my list that, off the top of my head, I know little about. So when the fourth Wednesday of every month (the day I get to buy some books) rolls round more often than not these books get neglected in favour of the ones I'm actively wanting. But! I don’t just have a list, I also have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who, when the fancy takes him, will randomly buy me books off my list. And I mean randomly. He uses random.org to pick I believe.
This is how I came to own Javier Calvo’s Wonderful World. I’m pretty sure this book ended up on my list because of the cover. Because come on guys, is that an amazing cover or is that an amazing cover? But is it the kind of book I normally read? Not so much. Books about gangsters and mobsters and such are pretty low on the hierarchy of topics I like to read about. And even lower than that are books that have been translated into English. Not, I hasten to ad, because I don’t like to read books by non-Western voices, but because I spend the time wondering if all the little sentence quirks and what not were the original author’s or the translator’s.
And this is pretty much the biggest problem I had with Wonderful World. Javier Calvo, you see, has a very distinct way of describing things. For example, he describes the way one character, Isis, drinks as (this is paraphrasing, mind you direct quotes are for, like, people who can be bothered getting up to fetch the book…) ‘Isis brought the glass to her lips as though she was only wetting them, but the liquid in the glass lowered considerably.” And every time Isis drinks, and she drinks a lot, we get that same ‘wetting her lips but liquid lowering considerably’ line. Every time. And this happens throughout the books again and again. These elaborate, sentence long descriptions are repeated over and over, word for word, sometimes on the same page. And it happens with little things, also. In one scene a character is wearing green plastic glasses with star shaped frames, so every few lines you have to read ‘green plastic glasses with star shaped frames,’ which gets old, fast.
It reads like the translator has done a very literal job, instead of maybe changing the exact wording to make the novel flow better. I am not even a little bit familiar with the Spanish language, but it seemed to me like maybe there were instances were a single Spanish word had been translated into several English ones, and so very time that one word appeared a whole sentence was inserted. Maybe. On the other hand, I have to consider that maybe this jarring repetition was intentional on Calvo’s part, and the original Spanish text reads the same way. Because surely someone had to read the translation before it went to print and I don’t see how it could have make it to the shelves as is unless it’s supposed to be that way. Really, I can’t stress enough how over the top the book is with these repetitions. In the section where we meet Lucas's mother for the first time Calvo refers to her skin as surgically smooth every single time she talks. It's very distracting.
But enough on this possible translation error possible stylistic choice that didn’t agree with me. What about the rest of the book? Did I like it? Well, maybe… The majority of the characters were unlikable. Did I say majority? I meant every single one except for our “hero” Lucas Giraut. And I wouldn’t even describe Lucas as a a likable guy, I suspect that while his enigmatic ways endeared him to me a lot of readers will dislike him greatly. Unfortunately scenes from Lucas’s point of view are few and far between. Which makes sense, because I don’t think the book would have worked if we saw too much of his inner workings, but still. In my limited experience with the genre the characters of Wonderful World seemed pretty typical of mob stories. This is one of the main reasons I don’t lean towards “mob” fiction, actually. The stupid, violent goons who populate so many of these books don’t interest me at all, stupid characters from any genre rarely interest me. And this book is just packed full of stupid people doing stupid things.
And don’t get me started on the way women are treated. Now, straight up, I get that in a book told from the point of views of unpleasant, dumb, violent men is not going to be a feminist touchstone, but still. There is one character, Hannah, who owns a gallery and is a super successful business woman (with a whole mess of issues) who pretty much becomes a slave to one of the gangster’s penis. Like, literally a slave to it, she just can’t resist it. There's one scene where's she's telling the guy, who's sprawled naked in front of her, to get up and leave but when his penis gets erect she forgets whats she's saying and kneels reverently in front of it. All of her intelligence flees in the face of the all powerful penis. Even more distasteful, there’s a scene early on in the book where the gangster who is actually the most likable, in a dumb puppy kind of way, accidentally rapes his own sister. The scene serves no purpose in the overall scheme of things, it’s pretty much never mentioned again and I’m pretty sure it was there to show how dumb the guy is, and also for a spot of light comic relief. Right.
What saved the book for me was this subtle (and not so subtle) subplot running through the whole thing. The events in Calvo’s fictional world coincide with a fictional worldwide release of a Stephen King novel (also titled Wonderful World. Ah, I love the smell of post modernity in the morning!). Calvo actually ends each of the book's three parts with an excerpt from this non-existance King text and that is one book I would really like to read. (For one, the weird repetition thing doesn’t happen here, which I guess is a point in favour of it being Calvo’s doing, not the translators…) It’s a little ironic that Calvo’s storytelling skills are at their best when he’s pretending to be someone else, but the three Stephen King Wonderful World chapters in the book are excellent examples of how to tell a story right. There’s also a nice contrast, as in the pretend King text there is a father desperate to save his son, while in Calvo’s Wonderful World parents are vilified.
Overall, despite my many complaints, I did enjoy the challenge this book presented. While I was reading it I can honestly say that I enjoyed it, or was at least moved to keep reading, it was only when I wasn’t reading it that that the annoying things came to mind. I think it’s good for any avid reader to occasionally step outside their comfort genres, if nothing else it might result in the longest review you’ve ever written… If this genre is one you enjoy, or if you're a fan of post-modern fiction, then it's a pretty good bet you'll find something to like here.
I have a long list of books I want to buy. A long, long list. And with such a long list it’s hard to keep track of exactly why I wanted to buy each book in the first place. Some of them I may have read a one line summery of and thought it sounded cool, or it might just be that the book has a truly excellent cover, or maybe I’m adding books to the list in my sleep... My point is there are a good number of books on my list that, off the top of my head, I know little about. So when the fourth Wednesday of every month (the day I get to buy some books) rolls round more often than not these books get neglected in favour of the ones I'm actively wanting. But! I don’t just have a list, I also have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who, when the fancy takes him, will randomly buy me books off my list. And I mean randomly. He uses random.org to pick I believe.
This is how I came to own Javier Calvo’s Wonderful World. I’m pretty sure this book ended up on my list because of the cover. Because come on guys, is that an amazing cover or is that an amazing cover? But is it the kind of book I normally read? Not so much. Books about gangsters and mobsters and such are pretty low on the hierarchy of topics I like to read about. And even lower than that are books that have been translated into English. Not, I hasten to ad, because I don’t like to read books by non-Western voices, but because I spend the time wondering if all the little sentence quirks and what not were the original author’s or the translator’s.
And this is pretty much the biggest problem I had with Wonderful World. Javier Calvo, you see, has a very distinct way of describing things. For example, he describes the way one character, Isis, drinks as (this is paraphrasing, mind you direct quotes are for, like, people who can be bothered getting up to fetch the book…) ‘Isis brought the glass to her lips as though she was only wetting them, but the liquid in the glass lowered considerably.” And every time Isis drinks, and she drinks a lot, we get that same ‘wetting her lips but liquid lowering considerably’ line. Every time. And this happens throughout the books again and again. These elaborate, sentence long descriptions are repeated over and over, word for word, sometimes on the same page. And it happens with little things, also. In one scene a character is wearing green plastic glasses with star shaped frames, so every few lines you have to read ‘green plastic glasses with star shaped frames,’ which gets old, fast.
It reads like the translator has done a very literal job, instead of maybe changing the exact wording to make the novel flow better. I am not even a little bit familiar with the Spanish language, but it seemed to me like maybe there were instances were a single Spanish word had been translated into several English ones, and so very time that one word appeared a whole sentence was inserted. Maybe. On the other hand, I have to consider that maybe this jarring repetition was intentional on Calvo’s part, and the original Spanish text reads the same way. Because surely someone had to read the translation before it went to print and I don’t see how it could have make it to the shelves as is unless it’s supposed to be that way. Really, I can’t stress enough how over the top the book is with these repetitions. In the section where we meet Lucas's mother for the first time Calvo refers to her skin as surgically smooth every single time she talks. It's very distracting.
But enough on this possible translation error possible stylistic choice that didn’t agree with me. What about the rest of the book? Did I like it? Well, maybe… The majority of the characters were unlikable. Did I say majority? I meant every single one except for our “hero” Lucas Giraut. And I wouldn’t even describe Lucas as a a likable guy, I suspect that while his enigmatic ways endeared him to me a lot of readers will dislike him greatly. Unfortunately scenes from Lucas’s point of view are few and far between. Which makes sense, because I don’t think the book would have worked if we saw too much of his inner workings, but still. In my limited experience with the genre the characters of Wonderful World seemed pretty typical of mob stories. This is one of the main reasons I don’t lean towards “mob” fiction, actually. The stupid, violent goons who populate so many of these books don’t interest me at all, stupid characters from any genre rarely interest me. And this book is just packed full of stupid people doing stupid things.
And don’t get me started on the way women are treated. Now, straight up, I get that in a book told from the point of views of unpleasant, dumb, violent men is not going to be a feminist touchstone, but still. There is one character, Hannah, who owns a gallery and is a super successful business woman (with a whole mess of issues) who pretty much becomes a slave to one of the gangster’s penis. Like, literally a slave to it, she just can’t resist it. There's one scene where's she's telling the guy, who's sprawled naked in front of her, to get up and leave but when his penis gets erect she forgets whats she's saying and kneels reverently in front of it. All of her intelligence flees in the face of the all powerful penis. Even more distasteful, there’s a scene early on in the book where the gangster who is actually the most likable, in a dumb puppy kind of way, accidentally rapes his own sister. The scene serves no purpose in the overall scheme of things, it’s pretty much never mentioned again and I’m pretty sure it was there to show how dumb the guy is, and also for a spot of light comic relief. Right.
What saved the book for me was this subtle (and not so subtle) subplot running through the whole thing. The events in Calvo’s fictional world coincide with a fictional worldwide release of a Stephen King novel (also titled Wonderful World. Ah, I love the smell of post modernity in the morning!). Calvo actually ends each of the book's three parts with an excerpt from this non-existance King text and that is one book I would really like to read. (For one, the weird repetition thing doesn’t happen here, which I guess is a point in favour of it being Calvo’s doing, not the translators…) It’s a little ironic that Calvo’s storytelling skills are at their best when he’s pretending to be someone else, but the three Stephen King Wonderful World chapters in the book are excellent examples of how to tell a story right. There’s also a nice contrast, as in the pretend King text there is a father desperate to save his son, while in Calvo’s Wonderful World parents are vilified.
Overall, despite my many complaints, I did enjoy the challenge this book presented. While I was reading it I can honestly say that I enjoyed it, or was at least moved to keep reading, it was only when I wasn’t reading it that that the annoying things came to mind. I think it’s good for any avid reader to occasionally step outside their comfort genres, if nothing else it might result in the longest review you’ve ever written… If this genre is one you enjoy, or if you're a fan of post-modern fiction, then it's a pretty good bet you'll find something to like here.
June 11, 2019
MARAVILLA😍
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Aventuras canallescas de una serie de personajes como salidos de un cómic (matones, drogadictos, mafiosos, una niña aficionada a leer a Stephen King, ...).
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⏩El protagonista, Lucas Giraut, hijo de un empresario ya fallecido, siempre sospechó que alguien del entorno de su padre le traicionó y lo entregó a la policía, por lo que decide asociarse con un antiguo socio de su padre para averiguar lo sucedido.⏪
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Tiene una manera bastante peculiar de narrar este escritor (por lo menos en este libro, no he leído nada más de él). Me ha gustado bastante.
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Lo elegí en la librería por su portada. Todo un triunfo.
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Aventuras canallescas de una serie de personajes como salidos de un cómic (matones, drogadictos, mafiosos, una niña aficionada a leer a Stephen King, ...).
•
⏩El protagonista, Lucas Giraut, hijo de un empresario ya fallecido, siempre sospechó que alguien del entorno de su padre le traicionó y lo entregó a la policía, por lo que decide asociarse con un antiguo socio de su padre para averiguar lo sucedido.⏪
•
Tiene una manera bastante peculiar de narrar este escritor (por lo menos en este libro, no he leído nada más de él). Me ha gustado bastante.
•
Lo elegí en la librería por su portada. Todo un triunfo.
September 27, 2016
If you want a mix of 1) Murakami-like flat, short sentences with repeated phrases, all undercut by some questioning statement at the end of the paragraph, 2) Crazed gangsterism outrage, 3)references to designer clothes, Stephen King, and Pink Floyd, 4) male hormones (and other parts), working and not working, 5) pre-pub girl schizophrenia and mal-formed women, then this is your book.
I’m still wondering why he wrote it.
I’m still wondering why he wrote it.
January 10, 2012
I really wanted to like this surrealistic adventure more..I think it deserves 3 1/2 stars to be honest. The trouble I had with it is that in a way it tried to be a little too experimental with the interjected pseudo Stephen King prose here and there. I loved the way Calvo used the idea of art from another age being dark and apocalyptic. I also liked some of the way he developed his characters. From the superficial surface level, this novel is about gangs and corruption but on a deeper level there is a hole in the universe, whether you realize it or not. Calvo shows us some rich characters, both those extremely likable and those we can't stand all mixed up like life generally is. It's an accelerated exciting life on the verge he shows us but doubtless some do live their day to days exactly like that. This is also about false art and corruption..about the seedy underground that the Spanish rich depend on. it's about the meaningless of some families..how power corrupts..how you can have money and every need provided for but unless you know the truth about death you are left wanton.
This story takes place primarily in Spain and was translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem.
memorable quotes:
pg. 3 "I don't like the things I don't like. And there's nothing to say about it. To hell with doctors and their explanations. No one's ever sent to the doctor for the things they like. As far as I know."
pg. 356 "With the antique films that always make her think of horror films...Surrounded by strange things and fake things."
pg. 455 "Dark and apparently deserted. The reddish, rusted quality the sky has now is just perfect for the end of a story."
This story takes place primarily in Spain and was translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem.
memorable quotes:
pg. 3 "I don't like the things I don't like. And there's nothing to say about it. To hell with doctors and their explanations. No one's ever sent to the doctor for the things they like. As far as I know."
pg. 356 "With the antique films that always make her think of horror films...Surrounded by strange things and fake things."
pg. 455 "Dark and apparently deserted. The reddish, rusted quality the sky has now is just perfect for the end of a story."
July 13, 2009
Funny, disturbing, but mostly funny. How many authors can you think of can make a Russian Rastafarian raping his own sister awkwardly hilarious? Suffice to say, the settings are hilarious and at times I found myself laughing out loud, much to my own displeasure (I find it creepy thinking about myself laughing out loud alone in a dark apartment with my face buried in a book). Apparently Calvo translated Infinite Jest into spanish, which explains a lot, in my opinion, in terms of his characters world-view and general behavior.
A previous reviewer exclaimed to the lazy to "wait for the movie". Wonderful World really does read like a script just waiting to be adapted for the screen. Similar to recent post-modern "epics" like Slattery's Spaceman Blues and Liberation, Wonderful World is a fun and humorous trod through a darkly violent and psychosis ridden farce.
As a side-note, any non-Spanish readers yearning for something else from Calvo can look for a short story he wrote based in The Simpsons world simply titled "Ned Flanders". A simple google with Calvo + "Ned Flanders" should do the trick.
A previous reviewer exclaimed to the lazy to "wait for the movie". Wonderful World really does read like a script just waiting to be adapted for the screen. Similar to recent post-modern "epics" like Slattery's Spaceman Blues and Liberation, Wonderful World is a fun and humorous trod through a darkly violent and psychosis ridden farce.
As a side-note, any non-Spanish readers yearning for something else from Calvo can look for a short story he wrote based in The Simpsons world simply titled "Ned Flanders". A simple google with Calvo + "Ned Flanders" should do the trick.
July 7, 2016
Perhaps I should have read the PS author interview before I read the book. Had I done so, I might have been more appreciative of the author's expressly Dickensian ambitions. A lot of interesting thought went into the planning of this novel. Oh, the best laid plans...
It's not that JC can't turn a phrase or craft a character or tell a story. He can do all of these, quite ably. It's just that the particular story that sprawls across this almost 500 page novel never feels quite worth the telling. As satire goes, it's Gary Shteyngart lite. The entire book has a creative writing program for-the-sake-of-writing-a-novel feel -- all flash and no substance.
JC is immensely thoughtful about his craft (so the PS author interview suggests), but Wonderful World has the whiff of a phoned-in exercise. Dickens, JC may aspire to be; Dickens, he is some distance from becoming.
Still, there's a quirkiness to JC's writing that intrigues me. Though I was underwhelmed by this novel, I'm not averse to giving its author another go in future.
It's not that JC can't turn a phrase or craft a character or tell a story. He can do all of these, quite ably. It's just that the particular story that sprawls across this almost 500 page novel never feels quite worth the telling. As satire goes, it's Gary Shteyngart lite. The entire book has a creative writing program for-the-sake-of-writing-a-novel feel -- all flash and no substance.
JC is immensely thoughtful about his craft (so the PS author interview suggests), but Wonderful World has the whiff of a phoned-in exercise. Dickens, JC may aspire to be; Dickens, he is some distance from becoming.
Still, there's a quirkiness to JC's writing that intrigues me. Though I was underwhelmed by this novel, I'm not averse to giving its author another go in future.
April 3, 2017
If you like black comedy, then you will like this book.
A friend gave me this book because he read that it was about Barcelona. It was about Barcelona - and everything was painted with a broad stroke - seedy, dark and cynical. The tourists are drunken English louts, the rich are all criminals, the criminals are shady characters (yes the similarity was a little too obvious), the women are either sex crazed, crazy or both, and the rest of the characters are even more shady types (lots of drugs, references to Pink Floyd, and porn). The two main characters are a teen girl obsessed about Stephen King and literally goes nuts while the other, the young man who inherits his father's company and wants revenge for his father's death several decades before. There are Russian mobsters, a Bob Marley loving criminal, a slutty high-end gallery owner and an aging mother of the young man who is plainly evil.
If any of these interest you, pick up this book. For me it did nothing.
A friend gave me this book because he read that it was about Barcelona. It was about Barcelona - and everything was painted with a broad stroke - seedy, dark and cynical. The tourists are drunken English louts, the rich are all criminals, the criminals are shady characters (yes the similarity was a little too obvious), the women are either sex crazed, crazy or both, and the rest of the characters are even more shady types (lots of drugs, references to Pink Floyd, and porn). The two main characters are a teen girl obsessed about Stephen King and literally goes nuts while the other, the young man who inherits his father's company and wants revenge for his father's death several decades before. There are Russian mobsters, a Bob Marley loving criminal, a slutty high-end gallery owner and an aging mother of the young man who is plainly evil.
If any of these interest you, pick up this book. For me it did nothing.
Read
July 21, 2009Ambiguous review: Translated from Spanish. This is basically a noir crime story, however much better written and complex than usual it is. Set in Barcelona, which sounded pretty darn cool to me before the book. According to this it is populated by a bunch of hookers, hired goons, and stick up men. Or on the other hand this writer could just be imitating what comes from the movies... It was pretty good in parts. The writer is strong... And I'm very aware too that "normal" people are not all that useful in a story, limited in thought and action as they must be to hold down the fort, pay the mortgage, etc. I guess I am just tired of these types of stories for the moment.
November 18, 2012
I kind of hated this book: prose like Haruki Murakami = flat, annoying, self-aware; acres of self-cleverness; brand name after brand name. But slowly it all became clear. Yes: the author channeled Dickens, and it was nice that Stephen King, the modern Dickens, played a role (incidentally Calvo does a pretty good Stephen King imitation). It turns out that there are indeed similarites here to Murakami, but this is a Murakami who genuinely believes in an empty and slow-moving world. In the end I liked it very much.
December 7, 2010
An ugly, cruel story. I put it down 200 pages in. What I'm sure is meant to be more than just a generic thriller about a heist never gives us any characters to like. Not a single one.
I've heard Ian McEwan say that he doesn't care for surrealism or magical realism because in those worlds "everything can happen, but nothing surprises." I read hundreds of pages, waiting for a surprise, but didn't even find a human.
I've heard Ian McEwan say that he doesn't care for surrealism or magical realism because in those worlds "everything can happen, but nothing surprises." I read hundreds of pages, waiting for a surprise, but didn't even find a human.
May 10, 2014
Simplemente Cojonudo...Me engancho de principio a fin...Personajes todos ellos 100% "made in Javier, humor negro para parar un tren, cinismo a borbotones, onirismo, thriller, ....Pero joder si hasta se lo montan Sephen king y Pink Floyd con el Universo Marvel, el rollo "rasta" jamaicano e incluso el RCD Español de fondo...literatura fresca fresca....Si Delillo le hiciera un guión a Tarantino o Lynch ni si quiera rozaría lo que ha hecho aquí Javier Calvo. Recomendado 100%.
September 22, 2010
Throughout the book I kept imagining quentin tarantino like action scenes mixed with telenovela drama. The characters were over-the-top and interesting and complex. It was like nothing I've read in a while. I am usually more bold in picking out new books at the library because its free and this is a great example where it paid off!
May 21, 2015
I was looking for a contemporary Spanish novelist to read while visiting Barcelona, and I loved this. Calvo's prose and observations, even in translation, had me laughing out loud, and the meta- Stephen King mini-novel within a novel was a nice touch. Visually, I kept seeing a cross between an Almodovar and Tarantino movie, so if you're a fan of those, you may enjoy this.
March 12, 2016
Bizarre, disjointed, overly-long madcap heist-type story through the streets of Barcelona, sprinkled with Stephen King worship -- but I love Stephen King and heists, and I didn't love this. Some very unique, stand-out characters bogged down in obnoxiously self-aware prose, all rushing, albeit very slowly, to an indeterminable end. I don't get the hype.
May 18, 2009
So far I am on page 57 and I am making neither heads nor tails of this book. It's like a dream with familiar people, only they have someone else's face, or a building transposed to a different place.
I quit! I hated this book and could not finish it.
I quit! I hated this book and could not finish it.
July 1, 2009
Hilarious, gruesome and sweet. Psychotic tween girls, russian rastas, bored porn stars, and the underbelly of the antiques market. If I had the chops I would read it in Spanish, if I was lazy I would wait for the movie, which is surely coming soon.
Want to read
August 5, 2009Well, I tried up to page 36 and it's pretty dense ... I think I might put this off until a "dry" period ... there's way too many other, more interesting-sounding books on my list than waste time TRYING to get into this one ... I still think it has merit, but ... maybe later!
May 4, 2010
Enjoyed the esoteric elements of this, including Pink Floyd-obsessed gangsters and the inclusion of chapters of a Stephen King pastiche. Not sure that the hybrid of surreal & metafictional elements with a heist/caper narrative always clicks, but the book never stops being an enjoyable read.
July 9, 2010
It's like a Quentin Tarantino movie in novel form, complete with pop-culture-spouting gangsters, sex and violence. There are some unexpected nuances and twists and just enough emotional depth and humour to make it all work for the most part.
December 5, 2010
Bizarre story with surrealistic leitmotif such as I have come to expect from Spanish writers. You have to be patient in the beginning, I seem to be saying that frequently as of late, but then it becomes a real page-turner. (Wish that I could find another "Shadow of the Wind.")
April 7, 2009
Reminds me a bit of a Guy Ritchie movie, which is a good thing in this case. A charming blend of tough guys, art crime, & family skulduggery.
February 22, 2010
Couldn't get into it, so I gave up. I tried really hard! For 150 pages...
August 4, 2011
There are so many enjoyable elements to this book, though it can drag on a bit sometimes the comedic elements kept me thoroughly entertained.
March 25, 2012
Podéis leer aquí mi crítica: http://huelealibro.blogspot.com.es/20...
May 17, 2012
Awful, cringeworthy. This author rates his ability (charles dickens and stephen king) far above his competency to execute
June 23, 2012
What fun...Tarantino meets Murakami meets a little of Amelie! 4.5 stars
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April 18, 2013Stopped reading on page 50, could not get into it...
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