Customer Reviews

Waiting for Columbus

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

When I sent in for this book, I was intrigued by the premise of the mysterious man washing up on the shores of Spain after swimming/floating in the Strait of Gibraltar thinking he's Christopher Columbus. Columbus is then admitted to a local mental institution in Seville, Spain and no one quite knows just how in the world he ended in the middle of the ocean or why he has this entrenched belief that he is in fact Christopher Columbus from over 500 years ago. A dark and mysterious set of events is implied as the cause of this seemingly normal man creating this fictitious personality/cover up as a coping device. Just what is it though? It is the job of Nurse Consuela, an employee of the Seville Mental Institution to listen to Columbus' recounting of his journey to discover the New World and the perils he faced on the way there.

Some additional clues are also provided that Columbus is not your standard run-of-the-mill mental patient either as the International Police (Interpol) are looking for a man that has been missing for months after a horrifying event took place in Spain just months prior to his disappearance and disconnect with reality. Could it be the same man?

That's the essential plot of Waiting for Columbus, but on a personal level it went much deeper. There is so much loss and sorrow in Columbus and by the end of the novel, the reader finds out just who Columbus really is and what caused him to become Columbus. It's also a story of great inspiration as Columbus through all the sorrow and pain he has experienced ends up finding out that life is indeed worth living and goes through hell and back to really figure that out. Of course, it's mildly cheesy at the end that there is a Columbus in all of us but it really struck a chord with me because of loss I've experienced in my own life and it's a nice reminder that if this man can come to terms with his demons then maybe we all can in some way.

My only qualm with the book is what others have said so far in that it's hard to tell the narratives apart sometimes and I found myself re-reading a few of Columbus' tales from time to time. In a way, it's a lot like Life of Pi in terms of narrative style but with alternating real-world and fictitious world stories instead of strictly fictitious and then a small real world piece at the the end. Once you get used to that style, it's not a bad book. It just takes a while.

A man washes up on the Spanish shore claiming to be Christopher Columbus. His belief is unshakable and he is institutionalized in Seville. It is unknown how he got into the water and his true identity is unknown as well. He bonds with a nurse named Consuela and it becomes her job to listen to his stories and pass them on to a psychiatrist. During the telling she falls in love with him.

He obviously knows a great deal about Columbus as his stories seem dead on accurate in places, but in other places he places modern things in his narrative, like cell phones, for example. As the story progresses Consuela believes they are getting closer and closer to finding out his real identity and what happened to him, but then a man from Interpol shows up. He's been looking for a missing person and Columbus seems to fill the bill.

Most of this story takes place in the institution and it seems like two stories in one, the one occurring in the present and the tale the man who thinks he's Columbus spins, the one that takes place five hundred years ago. And as impossible as it seems, the story seems real. Both stories are rife with tension, both exquisitely told. I cared for Columbus and I cared for Consuela. And I cried all during the last two chapters. This is a wonderful book.

I loved this story. It was my "Waiting Room Comfort" during a month of medical appointments--the specialist kind of appointment--where the waiting lasts for hours.

The inner workings of the human mind have always intrigued me. Throw in a bit of romance, an exotic local, and INTERPOL--and I'm captured. A great story that shows both understanding of, and compassion for, the tortured human soul. I found the ending especially powerful.

Great characters, a wending plot, vivid scenes. WAITING FOR COLUMBUS is a wonderful tale, expertly delivered.

Book Description from Shelfari: A man arrives at an insane asylum in contemporary Spain claiming to be the legendary navigator Christopher Columbus. Who he really is, and the events that led him to break with reality, lie at the center of this novel. Found in the treacherous Strait of Gibraltar, the mysterious man who calls himself Columbus appears to be just another delirious mental patient, until he begins to tell the "true" story of how he famously obtained three ships from Spanish royalty. It's Nurse Consuela who listens to these fantastical tales of adventure and romance and tries desperately to make sense of why this seemingly intelligent man has been locked up, and why no one has come to visit. As splintered fragments of the man beneath the facade reveal a charming yet guarded individual, Nurse Consuela can't avoid the inappropriate longings she begins to feel. Something terrible caused his break with reality, and she can only listen and wait as Columbus spins his tale to the very end.

My Thoughts

The closest analogy I can come up with to describe this book is watching a photograph develop in a darkroom. At first, you see nothing but a few shades of gray here and there. Then the borders come into focus. Then the full picture begins to fill in ... becoming clearer and clearer until you are looking at the fully formed photograph.

In this book, the "photograph" being developed is the man claiming to be Christopher Columbus. Of course, since it is 2004, we know he isn't the real Christopher Columbus. But who is he and why is he claiming to be Columbus? We join Nurse Consuela in listening to Columbus's fanciful and detailed accounts of his adventures. Yet his tales are filled with anachronisms that bring into focus, little by little, who this man really is in the present day and what happened to cause his break with reality.

Trofimuk does a brilliant job in creating the atmosphere and rhythm of Columbus's stories. You know how you read books and you can just visualize everything that is happening as if you are watching a movie? I felt like this throughout this book, and I'm not even sure how Trofimuk pulled this off. When I was reading, I just felt very present in the story, as if I was there watching it happen. So when Columbus is telling one his tales of his explorations and suddenly a cell phone rings in his story, it is jarring as if you were watching a movie set in the Middle Ages and suddenly a car drove by in the background.

I think this is the brilliance of the book. Like Nurse Consuela, you begin to fall in love a little bit with Columbus and his outsized personality and adventures. So when you are shockingly and repeatedly reminded that he is NOT Columbus and instead a man who has had a break with reality, you are jerked back into the real world. And as the book moves ever closer to revealing the man behind Columbus and why he took on this persona, you begin to mourn the loss of Columbus, just as Nurse Consuela must deal with her feelings of losing her patient as he begins to heal.

This was a beautifully written book that works its way under your skin. At its heart, this is a story of love, loss, grief, heartbreak, loneliness and how our minds cope with these emotions. It is a book meant to be read slowly and savored, and I suspect it will leave its mark on you like it did me. If you like literary fiction with a melancholy bent, this book is a must read.

The audio version of this book is read by Grover Gardner who did a wonderful job with this novel.

At first I was not sure what to make of this unusual novel.

An unknown man is pulled from the Strait of Gibraltar, and when he wakes up, he finds himself in the Sevilla Institute for the Mentally Ill. The year is 2005, and the man claims to be Christopher Columbus. To his lonely nurse, Consuela Lopez, and the psychiatric staff, the man who claims to be Christopher Columbus, details stories of his conquests including tales about the women he has loved.

His stories move from the 15th century, rich in period details to the present day. Quite frankly, some of the details he reports to the staff, clearly seem to be of a man who has lost touch with reality. He is obviously an intelligent man, and it is not long before nurse Consuela, who listens to his stories of love and adventure, day after day, begins to fall for this mystery man. There is a puzzle to piece together here, and as a reader you will probably be wondering, like I did, why is an Interpol agent from France is traveling to Spain looking for a mystery man, and possible assailant--is there a tie?

MY THOUGHTS - Boy, can this author can write. The prose is simply beautiful, and for that very reason, I wish I had the print version instead of the audio book. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the audio book, however, the writing is the rare style made me wish I could savor some of the passages over and over again. With the audio version it was also hard to distinguish between some of the narratives, and there were times that I felt I should just stop, and try to get the book from the library instead. I did not give up, as this book drew me in, and I was anxious to unravel the mystery. It was one of those books you pick up and don't want to put down until you finish the story. I was not prepared for the ending, and I will be thinking about it for some time I am sure.

Waiting For Columbus, is a book I probably would have never experienced had it not been for a few wonderful reviews that I had read. This novel is part mystery, part romance, part intrigue. If you don't mind a somewhat heart wrenching story, which demonstrates just how fragile the human mind and spirit can be, then I can't imagine being disappointed by this novel. RECOMMENDED (4/5 stars....probably would have been higher for the print version)

I had trouble with this one. When I read the synopsis I thought it sounded like an intruing story idea: a man wakes up in a mental hospital and claims he was Christopher Columbuses navigator. His nurse, skeptical, begins to listen to him and, as time goes by, takes greater and greater interest in her patient.

This is one of those novels that some would call "classical contemporary fiction" or other such branding. It reminded me a bit "The English Patient" but without the hook that seems to have captivated so many other reviewers. I got lost a few times, trying to make sense of what was going on and, at times, who was telling the story.

It's hard to give a review on a book that ultimately just didn't suit my tastes, so I'm giving it three stars for that reason (trying to remain neutral). I really tried...

I really wanted to like this book and had high expectations based upon the jacket and editorial blurbs. Much as I tried, I just could not get into it until the last 20 pages; several times I contemplated giving up on the book but kept trudging through thinking it would get better. Alas, it did not and was just more of the same -- Consuela pining for Columbus while Columbus slowly reveals more history.

"The journey is...the beauty in the way a thing is done". So sayeth the character 'Columbus' in Thomas Trofimuk's *Waiting For Columbus*.

A delightful and painful journey it is.

Trofimuk skillfully weaves the story of a shipwrecked sailor and shipwrecked man, a navigator, who has lost his Life's bearings and searches for whatever way he can to sail to 'The Western Sea'.

A man appears at the doorstep of a Spanish mental health sanatorium; and is immediately admitted if only because he insists he is the great explorer Christopher Columbus. He alternately charms or annoys his new 'shipmates', insisting he is awaiting delivery of his three ships from Queen Isabella and must begin his voyage Westward. This causes endless amusement for him as well as for The Reader.

Central among these people is Nurse Consuela. Despite her professional duty to remain objective in treatment of her patient, she becomes Columbus' advocate, ultimately falling under the spell of his charm and of his dreams.

Your probably saying "Oh no, not another Romantic Comedy of a Madman!" Yes, in some places it bears similarity to *Man of LaMancha* or *The Fisher King*. But it is far more complex and presents an interesting perspective on madness. Columbus' madness is not a full-blown roaring one like Vince Van Gogh's, or a crazy/not crazy schizophrenic trip like Norman Bates had. Columbus' madness is many-hued, multiple-layered and omni-directional. It spreads in all directions--inside and out, from the present to the past, between the imagined and real.

The author describes this world so well and so entertainingly that you as reader do not often know whether you are in the character's memory, living Columbus' historical life, in the amnesia patient's memory, or encountering real events.

The tale is not a lark, by any means. It has dark and sad passages, too. But you come to care for what happens to these characters. They are good people, they experience real emotions. They are interesting.

The journey that Trofimuk takes us on in *Waiting For Columbus* is a beautiful one. It was well worth the ride for me. I encourage you to do the same. You will not be disappointed.

The blurb captures the essence of this book. A man is admitted to an insane asylum who believes he is Columbus. Nurse Consuela is assigned to him to track his stories. She falls in love with him as he spins his yarns as Christopher Columbus. Obviously he is not Columbus and it is this awakening that fuels the ending.

The writing is top notch. When Columbus tells his stories, the writing is lyrical so it is no wonder that a rapt audience would fall for the man. Consuela is a fine character with depth. She and Columbus are the only main characters although there is a supporting cast in the background like the institution's directors and a patient who is convinced she is the Pope. They add some color.

Unfortunately, the book takes forever to make any progress. The stories come one after another; most of which include romances. At about page 185, halfway through the book, Consuela says to herself: "Not another story about a woman!" I couldn't have agreed with her more. Luckily at that point the stories about his sexual conquests are just about over.

As the stories progress, "Columbus" begins to conflate the 15th and 21st centuries. This is an agonizingly slow process and it is primarily in retrospect that the reader can make the discovery of the progression. While reading, some of the stories get confusing as to presentation and who some of the characters are.

The ending works well and comes out of the blue. It is all wrapped up, though, in the last fifteen pages or so.

Interjected along the way are small asides about an Interpol inspector who has suffered an unknown tragedy in his life. It is clear he is looking for this man, but not why or why he is so obsessed with finding him. In the end, that too, is made clear.

I guess it is realistic that a man so lost in insanity would take so long to progress, but as a book, it ran to tedium. It was a great premise and the writing is great, but the excellent writing just, and only just, makes up for the drag.

I couldn't get past the illogical and unrealistic portions of this novel and there were other things that just didn't sit well with me. Some of it is style, I'm not a fan of poetry, I like my fiction to be believable so I didn't care for the strange lines that made no sense to me. Like Consuela using a using a whole roll of duct tape on the light switches so she could keep her vow of living in darkness until she felt better after the breakup of her marriage.

There were other exchanges between Consuela and Columbus that I didn't care for, including when Consuela looks at Columbus with "clean eyes", when she didn't know he was on "the edge of a story" and when she liked the "color of his voice, it sounded like burnt sienna and at the bottom, the color and texture of fine sand".

Some of this will probably appeal to readers who like poetry and fantasy. But I like my fiction based in reality and when Columbus discovers an unused pool at the psychiatric facility and he and Consuela start swimming there and Consuela starts Googling "Columbus" and checking the phone book for places he referred to so she can check the accuracy of his delusions I had to give this book a pass.

If this author could have made the reality portion of the story realistic I would have kept reading but I couldn't get past all of the details that just didn't ring true to life and the other details that just seemed strange. This one just wasn't for me.