Scan barcode
A review by elizabethmercas
Podul de lut by Markus Zusak
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Oh, but how could I know what was awaiting me! I have to admit that when I started reading this book I hated it. It was dreadful – at least the first fifty pages, if I recall were torture for me to read and I thank myself that I did not give up. One day I woke up and decided to give this book one more chance: just a few more pages, and if when I am to reach 100 I still despise it, then I will not try any harder in the near future. But I did not have to try hard, because after the next five pages the book started to tell it’s story, and a marvelous story it is!
Penelope’s death and especially Carey’s were two key events in Clay’s life, that help our protagonist mature over the course of the book and rise stronger when hit by the unfortunate events of life. A strange but pleasant feeling it was when I felt like Carey, although written just for Clay’s character development, really just seemed like a character of her own – which made it a great deal harder when Markus Zukak, juggling with death, made her an unwanted visit; and he made so for good reason: to show the readers how the characters in his story, mostly boys, dealt with the ultimate loss of life, and how they, but especially Clay, reacted to a slow death, like the one that Penelope suffered versus a rapid and abrupt death akin Carey’s.
I really like the way the story was told, and to be quite honest I cannot imagine it any way different – the parallel between past and present is like a metaphor referring to the bridge that clay rises with the help of his father throughout the story: given that the past was too painful for any of the boys to revisit it before this bridge was risen, and along it the fact that the bridge signifies the way from a lost father to his children and to reconciliation and kindness, a ‘deck’ that clay was willing to build over known or unknown mistakes … a ‘deck’ that once existed in the warp of the Dumbar family past in the form of Penny, and collapsed with her..
Great book, with lots of meanings, hidden at first clance .
Penelope’s death and especially Carey’s were two key events in Clay’s life, that help our protagonist mature over the course of the book and rise stronger when hit by the unfortunate events of life. A strange but pleasant feeling it was when I felt like Carey, although written just for Clay’s character development, really just seemed like a character of her own – which made it a great deal harder when Markus Zukak, juggling with death, made her an unwanted visit; and he made so for good reason: to show the readers how the characters in his story, mostly boys, dealt with the ultimate loss of life, and how they, but especially Clay, reacted to a slow death, like the one that Penelope suffered versus a rapid and abrupt death akin Carey’s.
I really like the way the story was told, and to be quite honest I cannot imagine it any way different – the parallel between past and present is like a metaphor referring to the bridge that clay rises with the help of his father throughout the story: given that the past was too painful for any of the boys to revisit it before this bridge was risen, and along it the fact that the bridge signifies the way from a lost father to his children and to reconciliation and kindness, a ‘deck’ that clay was willing to build over known or unknown mistakes … a ‘deck’ that once existed in the warp of the Dumbar family past in the form of Penny, and collapsed with her..
Great book, with lots of meanings, hidden at first clance .