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A review by serendipitysbooks
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
When I Sing Mountains Dance is a kaleidoscopic novel with as varied a group of narrators as I’ve come across - a thundercloud, witches, a roebuck, the earth itself, civil war ghosts, mushrooms, water sprites… even the occasional person. The result is a really rich portrait, one with depth and breadth, not just of a single family and the tragedies that befall them, but of the Pyrenees in general - the landscape, the animals, it’s mythologies, the people who live there or pass through - past and present, and the interactions between them all. The writing and translation were beautiful; the language was rich and lush, sometimes playful, other times powerful but always poetic. With the right narrator I can imagine an audio version would be amazing. This won’t be a book for every reader but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Graphic: Death and Grief