Rating: 4/5
Review:
Odd but involving
This is an odd book.
I think it's rather a good one, but it' s not easy to say why.
The Schooldays of Jesus is not about Jesus (unless there's
some metaphor which I'm missing). It's
set in an unnamed, probably fictional Spanish-speaking country, where the main
protagonist Simón, his companion Inés and her son Davíd are running away from
the law for tanking Davíd out of school.
They settle in a new town and a sequence of things happens. It's a curious sequence which seems like a
chunk from some much larger story in that it begins and ends at somewhat random
moments with little explained at the beginning and little resolved at the end,
and as to what it's about…frankly, I have no real idea.
The narrative touches on the conflict between rationality
and passion, guilt and punishment, the best way to educate a child…and dozens
of other things, none of which is analysed to a conclusion, but raised
periodically, discussed and then left until the next time. It sounds ghastly, but there is a simple,
almost hypnotic quality to the prose and a thoughtful feel which kept me
reading right to the end. I found Simón
an engaging, flawed and slightly baffled protagonist and, odd though it is, I
rather liked the somewhat fairy-tale atmosphere the style creates and the
slightly random sequence of events and ideas.
It is very hard to give more of a flavour of this book. It's certainly not driven by a page-turning
plot and I imagine quite a lot of people will dislike its strange
atmosphere. Personally, I found it
rather involving and haunting; I'm glad I read it and I'd suggest giving it a
try.
No comments:
Post a Comment