The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel
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Beschreibung
Beiträge
This book leaves me a bit puzzled. I don't really know what to think of it. It consists of three parts which are very loosely connected and could in fact be read as three separate stories. The only two elements they have in common are a small village in the High Mountains of Portugal (which turn out to be not so very high) and a chimpanzee. The first part - set in 1904 - is about a young man who lost his wife and child and is now walking backwards as a kind of mourning. He finds out about an artefact hidden in a small village in the High Mountains of Portugal and travels there with one of the first automobiles. This part wass often quite funny but after a while it got a bit tedious. The second part was the weirdest. It starts with a pathologist working on New Years Eve in 1939. His wife visits him and tells him her theory on Agatha Christie's novels being modern versions of the Bible. Once his wife leaves him alone, an old woman from the said village arrives with her dead husband's body, asking the pathologist to tell her how her husband lived. That was when the story got very odd. The final part was my favourite. It is about a retired Canadian senator who rescues an ape from a sanctuary and moves with him to the village mentioned above. I'm not sure what this novel is supposed to be about which makes it so hard to rate. The three stars I gave it are just the average of the ratings for the three stories: 3 stars for the first one, 2 for the second and four for the final one. The style is similar to the author's masterpiece, Life of Pi: But what was great in that work, the emuneration of items and activities, often makes the High Mountians of Portugal a bit lengthy. There's also the element that leaves the reader wondering whether the story could be true or not. This worked well with the first and the last story, but clearly not with the middle one. (I received a free digital copy via Netgalley/the publisher. Thanks for the opportunity!)
Beschreibung
Beiträge
This book leaves me a bit puzzled. I don't really know what to think of it. It consists of three parts which are very loosely connected and could in fact be read as three separate stories. The only two elements they have in common are a small village in the High Mountains of Portugal (which turn out to be not so very high) and a chimpanzee. The first part - set in 1904 - is about a young man who lost his wife and child and is now walking backwards as a kind of mourning. He finds out about an artefact hidden in a small village in the High Mountains of Portugal and travels there with one of the first automobiles. This part wass often quite funny but after a while it got a bit tedious. The second part was the weirdest. It starts with a pathologist working on New Years Eve in 1939. His wife visits him and tells him her theory on Agatha Christie's novels being modern versions of the Bible. Once his wife leaves him alone, an old woman from the said village arrives with her dead husband's body, asking the pathologist to tell her how her husband lived. That was when the story got very odd. The final part was my favourite. It is about a retired Canadian senator who rescues an ape from a sanctuary and moves with him to the village mentioned above. I'm not sure what this novel is supposed to be about which makes it so hard to rate. The three stars I gave it are just the average of the ratings for the three stories: 3 stars for the first one, 2 for the second and four for the final one. The style is similar to the author's masterpiece, Life of Pi: But what was great in that work, the emuneration of items and activities, often makes the High Mountians of Portugal a bit lengthy. There's also the element that leaves the reader wondering whether the story could be true or not. This worked well with the first and the last story, but clearly not with the middle one. (I received a free digital copy via Netgalley/the publisher. Thanks for the opportunity!)