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nicka 's review for:
The High Mountains of Portugal
by Yann Martel
Over the years, I've casually dismissed most magical realism as too twee for me to appreciate. And though I hadn't read LIFE OF PI, I dismissed Martel similarly. Sure it's not fair but I'm not the only reader to unjustly pigeonhole authors.
In all honesty I wasn't expecting to like this. And after the first 100 pages, the novel hadn't yet proven me wrong. But am I glad I stuck with this triptych...My favorite 'panel' of the triptych was the middle, though the third is the most impressionable and the most likely to cause a sudden and sharp lump to form in your throat.
Grief and surrealism would appear to make strange bedfellows; mournful heavenward exhortations cozying with the absurd playfulness of surrealism seem tonally disparate. And yet Martel contrasts the worst kind of grief with a magical or surrealist turn of events and host of characters to create something indelible, something tragicomic, something akin to alchemy.
In all honesty I wasn't expecting to like this. And after the first 100 pages, the novel hadn't yet proven me wrong. But am I glad I stuck with this triptych...My favorite 'panel' of the triptych was the middle, though the third is the most impressionable and the most likely to cause a sudden and sharp lump to form in your throat.
Grief and surrealism would appear to make strange bedfellows; mournful heavenward exhortations cozying with the absurd playfulness of surrealism seem tonally disparate. And yet Martel contrasts the worst kind of grief with a magical or surrealist turn of events and host of characters to create something indelible, something tragicomic, something akin to alchemy.