Scan barcode
akublik's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favorite books this year. Sometimes when a novel shifts between two stories, I get impatient and flip ahead to read the story I am most interested in. The stories in this novel are woven together so beautifully that I was content to be carried along by the narrative, and wait for the next installment of Columbus's tale.
lessard8424's review against another edition
5.0
This is the loveliest book I have read in a long time. The writing is superb and the chapters almost mimicked the ebb and flow of the ocean tide for me.
carolpk's review against another edition
4.0
Here's another book that defies the star system for me. It's somewhere between a 4 "I really liked this and a 5, “it was awesome”. Early on, I wasn’t quite certain how I felt about this book. I found myself confused initially, perhaps because I was reading a few pages at a time. Over the weekend I was finally able to get down dirty and read!
I had first heard about Waiting for Columbus on a Booksonthenightstand podcast. Ann Kingman raved about it not only once but at least two other times that I recall. I respect Ann’s opinion so knew this would be on my list. But what really sealed the deal was reading a listener’s comments posted by Ann. Tanya talks about this book in a post titled A Story Too Good to Stay Buried in the Comments.
You can read the post at http://booksonthenightstand.com/2009/10/story-too-good-to-stay-buried.html, I’m also gong to copy it in its entirety here at the end of my comments. I really don’t want you to miss this one.
Simply put it is a novel about a psychiatric patient in a hospital in contemporary Spain who claims he is Christopher Columbus, and the nurse who listens to his stories in an attempt to understand him. But don't let the simplicity fool you. The tale winds back and forth in time and over continents and oceans like a cresting and sometimes crashing wave. This Columbus is not the Columbus of my school books. Here, he is a man with many desires, not only the quest for adventure and finding the new world but also a voracious lover of women. I felt like a voyeur listening in as he relates his story to Consulea, his nurse.
Be certain to set aside some time to get into it. It merits a few more pages than usual to get hooked. My sincere thanks to both Ann and Tanya for leading me to this book. It is one beautiful story.
A Story Too Good to Stay Buried in the Comments
By Ann Kingman
If you’ve ever blogged, you know that it can sometimes feel like a lot of work. I confess that there are many times when I’d rather be reading a book then blogging about reading a book. But then, every so often, I am reminded of the incredible community that has sprung up here, and I realize that I get so much from your participation that it could never really be just “work”.
I had an experience like that just recently. It happened in the comments of Josh Christie’s post Bring on the Tears. Tanya’s comments, and subsequent expansion on those comments, were so powerful that I had to pull them out and give them their own space.
In his post, Josh asked, “What book made you cry?”. Tanya, who works for an audiobook publisher, answered:
This year I read WAITING FOR COLUMBUS (by Thomas Trofimuk) which had such a powerful denouement that I broke down, as did my husband who narrated it (in fact, you can hear him break down on the recording. He wanted to go back and “fix” it, but it was such an honest reading that when he tried to “pull back” it ended up sounded fake! So, the original reading stands…)
I feel like I’ve known Tanya for a long time, thanks to her interaction with us here at Books on the Nightstand, but I had no idea that her husband was an audiobook narrator, and had no inkling that he narrated this book that I loved so much. Of course, I needed to know more, so I asked Tanya to tell us the whole story.
Here it is:
“Last April you mentioned WAITING FOR COLUMBUS in a blog/podcast. That’s all you did, mention it, but for some reason I became obsessed with it. I literally couldn’t wait until August to read the book, but I had no way to legitimately, personally, request an Advance Reading Copy from the publisher, so… I asked my boss to look into getting a galley. I was shocked when he came back and told me that our company had acquired the audiobook rights for the book!
The manuscript came to Blackstone and I was so excited, but I was soon thwarted in my attempts to pre-read it! My husband, Grover Gardner, who is the studio director for the company, always vets the galleys in order to make casting choices. He got the first crack at Waiting For Columbus and after reading the first chapter, insisted that he himself was going to narrate! He pre-read the whole of the book and finished right before dinner one night. Fork midway between plate and mouth, he stopped, started crying and left the table. He walked the dog for an hour and a half. All because of Waiting For Columbus. Of all the books he has narrated, this had never happened before. When he came back from his “time-out” I suspiciously queried him as to whether the book was that maudlin. He shook his head and only said “You’ll see.”
I insisted on being the recording engineer for the book. We were in the booth. The first “land mine” hit and I was affected, but okay. The second land mine hit and I could barely hold it together. Grover, even though he had already read the book, fell apart again. It is not maudlin, but beautifully and powerfully written. The book has become a very personal experience for each of us and both of us.
Even now, months after we cut the master, I can quote certain passages and there is one passage in particular which still sends me into a paroxysm of emotion. The book had another impact on me in a much more general way: I now search out books written by poet-novelists. I’ve come to appreciate Ondaatje’s and Margaret Atwater’s word crafting in particular, but it was Thomas Trofimuk’s words that found their way to my heart first.
Anyway, that’s probably way more than you wanted to know, but there it is.
For those who may be interested in the audiobook, you can listen to a sample at the Blackstone Audiobooks page for the title.
Tanya, thank you so very much for sharing your story. It’s amazing, and moving, and I can’t wait to listen to the audio with your and Grover’s experience in mind.
I had first heard about Waiting for Columbus on a Booksonthenightstand podcast. Ann Kingman raved about it not only once but at least two other times that I recall. I respect Ann’s opinion so knew this would be on my list. But what really sealed the deal was reading a listener’s comments posted by Ann. Tanya talks about this book in a post titled A Story Too Good to Stay Buried in the Comments.
You can read the post at http://booksonthenightstand.com/2009/10/story-too-good-to-stay-buried.html, I’m also gong to copy it in its entirety here at the end of my comments. I really don’t want you to miss this one.
Simply put it is a novel about a psychiatric patient in a hospital in contemporary Spain who claims he is Christopher Columbus, and the nurse who listens to his stories in an attempt to understand him. But don't let the simplicity fool you. The tale winds back and forth in time and over continents and oceans like a cresting and sometimes crashing wave. This Columbus is not the Columbus of my school books. Here, he is a man with many desires, not only the quest for adventure and finding the new world but also a voracious lover of women. I felt like a voyeur listening in as he relates his story to Consulea, his nurse.
Be certain to set aside some time to get into it. It merits a few more pages than usual to get hooked. My sincere thanks to both Ann and Tanya for leading me to this book. It is one beautiful story.
A Story Too Good to Stay Buried in the Comments
By Ann Kingman
If you’ve ever blogged, you know that it can sometimes feel like a lot of work. I confess that there are many times when I’d rather be reading a book then blogging about reading a book. But then, every so often, I am reminded of the incredible community that has sprung up here, and I realize that I get so much from your participation that it could never really be just “work”.
I had an experience like that just recently. It happened in the comments of Josh Christie’s post Bring on the Tears. Tanya’s comments, and subsequent expansion on those comments, were so powerful that I had to pull them out and give them their own space.
In his post, Josh asked, “What book made you cry?”. Tanya, who works for an audiobook publisher, answered:
This year I read WAITING FOR COLUMBUS (by Thomas Trofimuk) which had such a powerful denouement that I broke down, as did my husband who narrated it (in fact, you can hear him break down on the recording. He wanted to go back and “fix” it, but it was such an honest reading that when he tried to “pull back” it ended up sounded fake! So, the original reading stands…)
I feel like I’ve known Tanya for a long time, thanks to her interaction with us here at Books on the Nightstand, but I had no idea that her husband was an audiobook narrator, and had no inkling that he narrated this book that I loved so much. Of course, I needed to know more, so I asked Tanya to tell us the whole story.
Here it is:
“Last April you mentioned WAITING FOR COLUMBUS in a blog/podcast. That’s all you did, mention it, but for some reason I became obsessed with it. I literally couldn’t wait until August to read the book, but I had no way to legitimately, personally, request an Advance Reading Copy from the publisher, so… I asked my boss to look into getting a galley. I was shocked when he came back and told me that our company had acquired the audiobook rights for the book!
The manuscript came to Blackstone and I was so excited, but I was soon thwarted in my attempts to pre-read it! My husband, Grover Gardner, who is the studio director for the company, always vets the galleys in order to make casting choices. He got the first crack at Waiting For Columbus and after reading the first chapter, insisted that he himself was going to narrate! He pre-read the whole of the book and finished right before dinner one night. Fork midway between plate and mouth, he stopped, started crying and left the table. He walked the dog for an hour and a half. All because of Waiting For Columbus. Of all the books he has narrated, this had never happened before. When he came back from his “time-out” I suspiciously queried him as to whether the book was that maudlin. He shook his head and only said “You’ll see.”
I insisted on being the recording engineer for the book. We were in the booth. The first “land mine” hit and I was affected, but okay. The second land mine hit and I could barely hold it together. Grover, even though he had already read the book, fell apart again. It is not maudlin, but beautifully and powerfully written. The book has become a very personal experience for each of us and both of us.
Even now, months after we cut the master, I can quote certain passages and there is one passage in particular which still sends me into a paroxysm of emotion. The book had another impact on me in a much more general way: I now search out books written by poet-novelists. I’ve come to appreciate Ondaatje’s and Margaret Atwater’s word crafting in particular, but it was Thomas Trofimuk’s words that found their way to my heart first.
Anyway, that’s probably way more than you wanted to know, but there it is.
For those who may be interested in the audiobook, you can listen to a sample at the Blackstone Audiobooks page for the title.
Tanya, thank you so very much for sharing your story. It’s amazing, and moving, and I can’t wait to listen to the audio with your and Grover’s experience in mind.
lernstreads's review against another edition
4.0
Kind of grows on you as you read. You find yourself getting caught up in the story just like Consuela.
bkdrgn303's review against another edition
4.0
I listened to this novel on a Playaway MP3 player. I found it to be a beautiful and compelling story. A man washes ashore in Spain, claiming to be Christopher Columbus. As he tells stories to his nurse, Consuela, he comes to grips with the tragedy that caused his break with reality. This is a dense and beautifully written piece of work.
mrsfligs's review against another edition
4.0
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.
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.
elysahenegar's review against another edition
4.0
I like books with good bones, and this story has structure and tissue and whole hidden threads that course through. If you're someone who likes to puzzle through, to consider what's happening underneath, you'll enjoy this novel too. This is a story that sifts through the issue of human suffering, how we navigate our deep grief, how we summon a sense of purpose and the will to pursue adventure in the wake of deep pain. The writing has texture and color and smell---this author knows well the memory we have for smells, the emotion and nostalgia they evoke, and he uses them well. The prose does include some in your face, earthy descriptions of sexuality and the human body that feel more like an invasion of your space than anything erotic, but it also carefully examines the makings of love, romance, attraction, and the differences among them. In stages, the writing is poetic, thoughtful, and even wise. This is a colorful tale with a shadow hiding underneath, and you'll read all the way to the last page before you discover the answer to the question Nurse Consuela asks in the beginning: Why Columbus?
the_sassy_bookworm's review against another edition
5.0
Really, Really liked this one! A man washes ashore and claims to be Christopher Columbus. He is sent to a metal institute and soon forms a bond with one of the nurses. This was just such a well written book, the relationship between "Columbus" and "Consuela" is beautifully written and the stories "Columbus" recounts are touching and offer clues to what really happened. It's not a very fast paced read, but more of a stroll through love and tragedy. Just a really great read!
suey's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting, compelling story about a guy who is crazy and thinks he is Columbus. Overall, I liked it, but I had a few problems with it too.