Death in Spring | 
pickMy first Women in Translation Month read this year. This book feels so much like a bad dream, eerie in the best way. There's a lot to unpack in what is certainly rich symbolism. A very interesting short read. #womenintranslation #witmonth
Stopped by Malvern books while here in Austin, TX, and I love this shop! So well curated and full of indie and under appreciated presses and authors. If you're looking for an interesting and unexpected read, stop in here and ask the staff for some help. Picked up two books (both staff suggestions) and I hope to stop by again before we leave.
"You can have everything you want, but accompanied by pain, until you learn not to want anything."
"A furious tongue of fire rose, then suddenly broke into deliquescent red and blue tongues, sometimes clear fire, sometimes crowned by smoke searching for its way through the air, not knowing which direction to take, until finally the wind carried it off. The fire cried out with a desperate voice, like a voice laughing at everything, crimson with madness."
"Men who are eager to kill are men who are already dead. Men who do things are men who are already dead. He was a man who was already dead, could do only remarkable things, he and his horse were one and the same because he‘d passed on to his horse all of his death, never realizing they were both dead from the first day they began pursuing the serpent."
"Spring is sad, in spring all the world is ill, plants and flowers are earth‘s plague, rotten. The earth would be calmer if it were green-less, without this fury, this blind will that consumes everything but craves more, the affliction of the green, so much greenness and poisonous color."
"I could see a sliver of a moon; it was the same color as the sharp edge of the axe, and both ends curled toward the center."
"Behind us, the moon pinned our shadows to the ground, slowly casting them onto the river; it partially erased them, and joined them at the mouth. When the moon died, it carried away the shadows, still joined at the mouth, as if it had dragged them away by their feet."
"Night was suffocating: the hot shadow settled on your chest, giving the impression it wanted to crush you. I saw stars falling on the other side of Maraldina, beyond the forest of the dead."
"Beyond the Pont de Fusta, the path descended. When I was little the path would pull me along as if I were suddenly empty. A cliff frightens you, stops you, but a slope is silent and sweeps you away. On a slope, man met shadow and they never parted."
"I was fourteen years old, and the man who had entered the tree to die was my father."
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pickA boy comes of age in a Catalan village. The villagers have strange rituals - the boy is wary of resisting as he sees the punishments meted out. Nature pervades the book but is seen as a threat: bees stalk the boy; wisteria smothers the houses & must be cut back. A moment of beauty is so rare that when it comes, it‘s heartbreaking. A rich book, I admired the luminous prose & vivid, weird scenes, but didn‘t enjoy it. A pick but a challenging read.
Seasonal reading in the garden. 😉🌸
I‘ve made a video of my Spring TBR (being in Australia and wishing it were autumn! 😉). Death in Spring is at the top of my list. 📚
https://youtu.be/-hxebdzNEsk
A birthday present I‘m very excited to read!! ðŸ’
One of my last pool afternoons of the summer! Spending it with this mythological quest novel. It's quite delicious and weird.
I just had to have a paper copy of this Catalan novel – what a gorgeous cover!
Another shot of Death In Spring, taken among bluebells and spring sunshine. 🌞
I've just started reading my first Agatha Christie novel - Passenger To Frankfurt - and I'm hooked. Are any of you Christie fans?
#books #litsy #litsyreads #bookworm #bibliophile
pick'Death In Spring' is a book I could read and reread and still not fathom all its secrets. It is mysterious and beautiful with lines such as, 'Souls have no mouth, so they spoke to us through the voice of the wind.' That it remains a mystery only makes it more enchanting. This is the first Catalonian novel I've read, it will not be the last. 🌱✨
p.s. Apologies for the unintentional hiatus. I've been using Instagram more (@oonagh.moon) 🙊
The writing is so beautiful. I've read the first page three times. Planning to savor this one!
"When she was born, I had not loved her. She looked peculiar when my wife showed her to me; it was as if a nuisance had settled into my house. I wanted to run away, so I would not have to see the thing that clearly I had made, because life is sad, to be born is sad."
Almost finished part one...so good
