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cocoonofbooks 's review for:
Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes
This one is definitely an investment of time, and there's a lot to say about it, so I'll probably forgot some things on my first attempt to jot down my thoughts. If I think of more, I'll come back and edit. Let's split this up into the good parts and the bad parts.
The good:
-It's very funny. It's not laugh-out-loud funny most of the time (though it may have been to 17th century readers), but much of the book was both amusing and entertaining. I looked forward to picking it up again.
-It ends up being quite sweet, especially as you find that both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are quite wise and level-headed about everything unrelated to chivalry. They have a caring relationship for one another even when they bicker.
-There's a good combination of dramatic irony (where the reader knows what's going on but the characters don't) and suspense or surprise (where the reader doesn't know what's actually going on until later). And just in general, it's hard to predict what is going to happen next. The most notorious adventure of Don Quixote, that with the windmills, happens in the first 10 chapters of the 70+ chapters that make up the book.
-There's a lot of sly commentary about writing, publishing, plagiarism, and translating, as Cervantes claims to be translating from another writer's history of Don Quixote, and then later on claims to be only recording what another person translated from the original writer.
-One of the characters early on, Marcela, delivers a badass defense of her supposed friendzoning of one of the other characters. They're all sitting around bemoaning the fact that he died due to her rejection of him and calling her cruel, and she shows up and is like, "It's not my fault that he loved me. I have zero obligation to return the affections of everyone who loves me, and plus if I did, you'd all say I was promiscuous, so bug off."
The bad:
-There are quite a few inconsistencies, some of which were apparently introduced intentionally (in the Second Part, the characters talk about some of the problems with the First Part of the narrative), but some of which were just confusing. The whole narrative thread about Dulcinea del Toboso hinges on the fact that Don Quixote has never met her and made her up, but it's mentioned twice near the beginning that she's actually a farm girl Don Quixote once had a crush on whom he renamed when he took on his own new name. If you remember that, then much of what comes at the end of the book makes zero sense.
-The whole part with the Duke and the Duchess was WAY too long. I get that we're supposed to like them at first for humoring Don Quixote and then despise them for how they take advantage of his madness, but it just went on and on and on longer than it needed to.
-Parts of the book started to feel repetitive to me in the Second Part, like Cervantes was just reusing the same narratives over again in a slightly different form. I was ready to scream if the "he promised to marry me so I let him sleep with me and I got pregnant and now he won't marry me" plot was used one more time. Also, some parts just seemed pointless, like the sister and brother who snuck out in each other's clothes. Sancho was all, "I want the brother to marry my daughter" and then we literally never hear about it again.
Ultimately I'd come down on the side of it being worth a read, though it's certainly not one of the best books I've ever read. I quite enjoyed the audiobook narrated by Roy McMillan and would recommend it if you have 36 hours to spare!
The good:
-It's very funny. It's not laugh-out-loud funny most of the time (though it may have been to 17th century readers), but much of the book was both amusing and entertaining. I looked forward to picking it up again.
-It ends up being quite sweet, especially as you find that both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are quite wise and level-headed about everything unrelated to chivalry. They have a caring relationship for one another even when they bicker.
-There's a good combination of dramatic irony (where the reader knows what's going on but the characters don't) and suspense or surprise (where the reader doesn't know what's actually going on until later). And just in general, it's hard to predict what is going to happen next. The most notorious adventure of Don Quixote, that with the windmills, happens in the first 10 chapters of the 70+ chapters that make up the book.
-There's a lot of sly commentary about writing, publishing, plagiarism, and translating, as Cervantes claims to be translating from another writer's history of Don Quixote, and then later on claims to be only recording what another person translated from the original writer.
-One of the characters early on, Marcela, delivers a badass defense of her supposed friendzoning of one of the other characters. They're all sitting around bemoaning the fact that he died due to her rejection of him and calling her cruel, and she shows up and is like, "It's not my fault that he loved me. I have zero obligation to return the affections of everyone who loves me, and plus if I did, you'd all say I was promiscuous, so bug off."
The bad:
-There are quite a few inconsistencies, some of which were apparently introduced intentionally (in the Second Part, the characters talk about some of the problems with the First Part of the narrative), but some of which were just confusing. The whole narrative thread about Dulcinea del Toboso hinges on the fact that Don Quixote has never met her and made her up, but it's mentioned twice near the beginning that she's actually a farm girl Don Quixote once had a crush on whom he renamed when he took on his own new name. If you remember that, then much of what comes at the end of the book makes zero sense.
-The whole part with the Duke and the Duchess was WAY too long. I get that we're supposed to like them at first for humoring Don Quixote and then despise them for how they take advantage of his madness, but it just went on and on and on longer than it needed to.
-Parts of the book started to feel repetitive to me in the Second Part, like Cervantes was just reusing the same narratives over again in a slightly different form. I was ready to scream if the "he promised to marry me so I let him sleep with me and I got pregnant and now he won't marry me" plot was used one more time. Also, some parts just seemed pointless, like the sister and brother who snuck out in each other's clothes. Sancho was all, "I want the brother to marry my daughter" and then we literally never hear about it again.
Ultimately I'd come down on the side of it being worth a read, though it's certainly not one of the best books I've ever read. I quite enjoyed the audiobook narrated by Roy McMillan and would recommend it if you have 36 hours to spare!