The latest book I have read ...

"Of the vanity, the hatred, the shards of love, all that was left was dust and a sad spectacle of splendour and forgetfulness."

 

A broken mirror is an incredibly well articulated woven mosaic of a complex family saga that expands from the prosperous Barcelona of the 1870's through to the advent of the Franco dictorship, leading to an ultimate sense of loss inevitably attached to legacy.

I am not suprised Gabriel Garcia Marquez stated he was bedazzled by Mercè Rodoreda, an author I had never heard of, despite being considered one of the most important voices in Catalan Literature. Her meticulous analysis of the main characters in the saga, both physical and emotionally, as well as the environment, is very rich and almost intimate-like thus creating a sense of proximity.

"Enchanting ... a Nabokovian precision of observation." - Los Angeles Times



 

 

If it took me longer than it should have taken me because I didn't want those descriptions to end, having therefore reduced my reading rhythm to accommodate the almost immediate fascination for Rodoreda's style of writing. As always I have copied down some extracts, which I felt were either meaningful or resonated with me in some sort of way.




"To know the exact time is the most important thing in life. A man is made of seconds, of minutes."



"He had dreamt a different life, very different from the one he had lived (...) a life designed by his will rather than by circumstances, always thinking that he would have time to rectify it but ultimately with not much desire to rectify anything."



"He would wonder at each little thing, as if at every moment he were discovering the world."