Eduardo Sacheri

Este libro es como Ocean's Eleven Aqui no hay quien viva.
Supongo que es muy de mi generación entender estas referencias.

En resumen, una panda de viejos y de gente que no tiene donde caerse intentando dar el golpe del siglo.
Es incredible lo autentico que es el libro, esta gente piensa normal, no son gente del libro, son reales, increíblemente bien perfilados. Según lo iba leyendo iba pensando que bien esta hecho esto, que personaje mas bueno.

A veces he tenido que dejar de leer porque no show more podia de las lagrimas de risa. No hay mas que decir 5 estrellas fácil. show less

Buenos Aires, 2 de abril de 1982. Los argentinos amanecen con una novedad mayúscula: “¡Recuperamos las Malvinas!”. Y así comienzan tres meses inolvidables, tres meses en que aquellas islas de los mapas escolares se vuelven el eje de la conmoción social, tres meses en que los protagonistas de esta historia pasarán de la euforia a la desolación. Y comienza también la pesadilla para las familias de Carlitos, Antonio y el Conejo, soldados conscriptos clase 1962 recién licenciados, show more que son reincorporados y enviados a pelear. A miles de kilómetros del escenario del conflicto, en medio de la desinformación y la publicidad engañosa, la guerra contra los ingleses es una abstracción, un relato borroso y escurridizo que cada quien puebla con sus propias fantasías y preconceptos. Unidos o enfrentados, lúcidos u obnubilados, los personajes de este gran fresco de Eduardo Sacheri atravesarán, junto con los lectores, este período vertiginoso, contradictorio y plagado de significados de la historia argentina reciente. show less

Last week I got so excited about a fantasy series that I stayed up way too late to finish 3 books in a little over a week. By the time I finally remembered about the tendency of time to keep going no matter how engrossed we are in a story it was Sunday and I was nowhere near ready to write the review for The Secret In Their Eyes, especially since I had mixed feelings about the book. The mixed feelings persisted until the very end and in a way I feel like I've read two different books about show more the same characters. One is set in the present day and tells about a retired court employee struggling with writing a book and with his love for a woman he believes is out of his reach. The other is the actual book Chaparro is writing and it is set in the 60s and tells about Chaparro's investigation into the rape and murder of a young woman and how it ties people together for decades and affects the course of their lives. The past and present alternated and I really enjoyed the "past" parts. The voice was direct and strong, although not invulnerable, the events unfolded at a good pace and I really liked the characters, sympathized with them and hoped they would succeed. The present was more difficult. Half the time it read like a stream-of-consciousness rant about how much Chaparro is in love with Irene and how he can't live without thinking about her all the time. These parts were much less enjoyable, to me they were in the way of the real story and it was tiring reading about Benjamin's lovesickness over and over, how he couldn't sleep for days after every meeting with Irene, remembering the way she smiled and looked at him and smelled. It was more like reading about a teenager living through his first crush than about a 60-year-old man and whenever these chapters started I wished the author would go back to telling us about the investigation.
If someone asked me to quickly name one thing that sets the writing of this book apart from the others I've read this year I'd say it's the vocabulary. There were more SAT words in this one novel than I recall seeing in all the rest of them combined and the best part is that it felt natural, like that's just the way the author talks and it was thrilling to read a book where words you don't see every day, let alone use, don't feel forced. The sentence structure and the way the sentences fit together was unusual, I'm just not sure whether that's because the novel is translated or that's the way it was meant to be. It took some getting used to but eventually it became charming in a way and I almost stopped noticing it.
Reading The Secrets In Their Eyes made me think about justice. There are so many crime TV shows these days and at the end of almost every episode the guilty get what they deserve but here things aren't so simple and I keep thinking about how more often than not the scum of the earth keep going, adding one wrongdoing after another to the scorecard they feel no remorse about while the honest and the righteous suffer at their hands, make sacrifices to ensure that the guilty get punished and even then there are no guarantees that it'll actually happen. I guess that's the reason we have the superheroes and the TV shows - we want justice to prevail and for the good guys to come out on top. And here they do. Eventually.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

P. S. In 2010 a movie by the same name won an Oscar as the best foreign film and in case you've seen it and are wondering whether it would spoil the story for you I can say that both yes and no. The general direction of the plot is the same but the film-makers took quite a few liberties with the story so regardless of whether you watch the movie after reading the book or the other way around there are still plenty of surprises. show less

I wasn't even born when the dirty war took place in Argentina. I was born during the Guatemalan Civil war and could relate to a whole lot of what was described in the book simply because of the atmosphere that even as a child, was quite palpable. The atmosphere of fear and that you might see people disappear.

I saw the movie first and it haunted me deeply and the book did the same, in a different manner. Of course there were a few things that were changed, but the story was still the same show more sad and haunting one that had captivated me years before.

It doesn't need to be a fast book and I loved how it unravelled slowly to show how an unsolvable mystery gets resolved. But also how there is no happy ending and how damaged everyone was by the crime that occurred.

It was a good book that left me thinking about it for days after. show less