A whirlwind of emotions and events: that's how I describe this book - and it's reflective of my own life at the moment.
I cannot really put my finger on what made this book so outstanding to me other than the fact that I'd never read anything in this genre before, but there was something deeper.
Of course it all makes sense that Alba is the narrator and had access to both Esteban Trueba's notes and to Clara's notebooks which bore witness to life. Yet, there are still some things left undone, and at the same time, I've never felt so complete in not knowing the identity of someone or the whereabouts of another. This book didn't tie up every lose end, and yet it resembled a perfect mixture of magic and realism that it almost seems plausible that it was written from the notebooks of real people.
But just like life, the book's ending does not answer every question, but it all ties back together. The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning. It culminates in the real life fact that completion of one story ties right into the beginning of another one and then the end of that story begins another one until all of the human race is finally finished.
I usually try my best to tie my main point into the application to real life so here we go: no one is ever complete without a community. That whole "one story ends to begin another one" signifies community. Without a community of people someone suffers greatly. From my own experience, the lack of community leads me to darker places and feelings of incompleteness. Examining Esteban, though he had a community of family and associates, that's not the community I mean. Esteban had no one because he did not let himself have anyone. Esteban trusted no one and in turn, no one trusted Esteban, he pushed the world and everyone in it away in order to pursue his own dreams and desires, blinded by the egotistical belief that only his way would benefit anyone at all. The lack of community and the pushing away of the community he had available created in him a heart of stone and lack of emotion so strong that he forgot other people had emotions too. Most of the regret he felt in his life was centered around the fact that he hadn't worked harder or built better, not the fact that he pushed the world so far away they never came back.
Completion, full completion, requires community. Otherwise, we all end up like Esteban, depressed and surrounded almost completely by people that only want you for your money and influence, not your soul and personality.
We all need to be complete.
Comments: Jamie & Drew
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