Lido en xuño 2011. Relectura novembro 2013 ( )

Lido en xuño 2011. Relectura novembro 2013 ( )

Il tema non è la fiaba di Kai e Lucia ma il romanzo filosofico di un'estate (anche se il tempo è quello dilatato di tutte le estati del tempo) nella vita di Alfonso Tiburon, l'aragonese col vestito blu. Una fiaba dentro un romanzo, che è dentro il pensiero di uno scrittore olandese e il lettore da fuori ( o da dentro?) ne diventa parte. Grande letteratura. ( )

Disappointed, in both me and the book. I'm not smart enough to appreciate the book, but I still think the story really is just too wandering and self-indulgent. Either way, I was not beguiled by the writing so I don't care. ( )

A quick novella that essentially combines two separate stories into a single tale, with some recurring themes throughout. The primary story is the fairy tale of Kai and Lucia, two circus performers who make the perfect couple. When they are forced to take their act to the south, events transpire that separate the two lovers, and Lucia is left to try to rescue her husband. It's a solid, well written story that manages to capture the feel of old world fairy tales, and while it's a simple story, that's okay for a fairy tale (in fact this book makes the argument that simplicity is a necessary quality for a true fairy tale).

The other story in this novella is that of Tiburon, a road inspector from Zaragoza who is the ostensible author of the Kai and Lucia fairy tale. The segments dealing with Tiburon provide a brief sketch of his life, but primarily contain musings on the nature of books, myths, fairy tales, and storytelling in general. The road inspector struggles to give form to his story throughout the book, and by the end it's clear that he's perhaps just as much a fairy tale inhabitant as the characters he's given credit for creating.

The novella weaves these two stories together, but personally I found Kai and Lucia's story more compelling and better written. Tiburon's thoughts on the nature of story creation and the different forms of stories were interesting at times, but his insights are less than earth-shattering. His segments skewer many things, from the Dutch to philosophers, but Nooteboom does this in passing and doesn't make it a large part of the story. At the end of this novella I was left wishing that more time had been dedicated to Kai and Lucia's fairy tale and less to Tiburon's thoughts, instead of a nearly even split. This book is vastly different than Nooteboom's Rituals, proving that as an author he has range, but I found Rituals to be a noticeably more enjoyable work. ( )