Customer Reviews

La Velocidad De La Luz (Coleccion Andanzas) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This novel can be better understood if we also read Sol de medianoche (Midnight sun) by the Puerto Rican writer Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá. The plots are very similar and Cercas had reviewed Rodríguez Juliá's novel ten years before La velocidad de la luz (The Speed of Light) came to light.

Primero, perdoname si mi espanol no es perfecto; no soy hablante nativo, pero he estudiado el idioma por nueve anos.

Yo habia leido Soldados de Salamina en uno de mis cursos de espanol, y me gustaba ese libro mucho. Asi que, cuando me entere de que Cercas habia escrito una novela nueva, lo compre lo mas pronto posible. Como estudiante de espanol, este libro fue muy denso para leer. Yo podia comprender los sucesos del trama, pero creo que perdi muchos de los detalles. Ademas, me sentia bastante aburrida durante las tres primeras partes del libro. Casi era un trabajo para leerlo. Pero empezo a interesarme durante la cuarta (y ultima) parte. Entonces yo no podia dejar de leerlo. Sin embargo, la ultima pagina de la novela me dejo con el sentimiento de que Cercas no habia encontrado una manera de terminar el libro y entonces simplemente dejo de escribirlo.

En sumo, no es un libro malo, pero yo recomendaria Soldados de Salamina en vez de este.

I read a lot of fiction in Spanish and this, along with Soldados de Salamina, are two of my favorites. The novel is well written and continues to build and build throughout, making you feel as though you've been through something catastrophic by the end. From a psychological standpoint, it's fascinating, up there with Crime and Punishment. I'm from the Midwest, so I found Cercas' depiction of a college town in Illinois that much more interesting. I feel like he really got the culture right, and loved the references to Dylan's "It's alright Ma". I rarely have the urge to contact an author after finishing a novel, but tried to no avail after reading this one.

This novel contains apparently some of autobiography and so, mentions sometimes his previous work, "Soldados de Salamina".
Because the protagonist is, more or less, a copy of the author, at first, a young aspirant to writer. At the beginning he works and survives poorly in Barcelona. A teacher and scholar from these university recommends him for a vacancy as Spanish language and literature teacher in a village of the USA near Chicago.
There, his economical situation is better, and he knows the American country and another people, but the most important, which becomes a friend, is Rodney Falk. Rodney, 41 years old, more ten years older than the young Spanish, is an ex - combatant of Vietnam War and prey of terrible sense of guilt owing his war past. He had a brother killed in that war before he decided to change his destination in Vietnam from a business desk to a special hard fighting group. Rodney's father, a widow physician, is a right man, but he doesn't understand fully the troubles of his son, because himself was a soldier during World War II and he thinks Vietnam was a similar war. Perhaps owing to loneliness, Rodney and the author trust one in another. Rodney marries and gets some jobs, but his remorse and feeling of guilt make sterile his efforts. He drinks and has several psychiatric crisis.
Two years later, the author returns to Spain, works hard, writes "Soldados de Salamina", a novel that deals with an episode of Spanish Civil War that becomes a success at the level of Spain. The novel is translated and known also in USA and in the literary world, and after a sort of period of big economical and social recognizing, including some conjugal infidelities, one night after a hard discussion the wife and little child of the author results killed in a car accident, so, he falls in a deep depression and lives isolated for a time, but then, Rodney reappears in travelling to Spain, so the two old friends have an brief encounter in Madrid when finally Rodney tells him his full story and returns to the USA. The end is tragic and the Spanish author returns to the USA when he has a meeting with Rodney's wife and with his old American friends: some have succeeded in life, some not.