It's been a hot minute since I read this book but my opinion of it has stayed the same; it is well-written, and like watching a train wreck. It is gruesome and brutal but also enthralling and clever. All in all, a very good book, but definitely not exactly for the very faint of heart.
The overall feeling I had when reading this book was a kind of sadness, I guess; a mourning for the culture that was lost during the years that Franco ruled the country. The other big feeling I had reading this was anger at the system and fascism in general. All in all, this was a great book, though the ending felt a teeny bit rushed. I also feel like there was a lot of backstory that went undiscovered and like there was just too much story for this one-off medium length novel.
Much Ado About Nothing is certainly top 5 Shakespeare ever, even if I haven't read enough of them to have a true ability to rank them. I love it nearly as much as I love Hamlet, if for completely different reasons. I will say, though, that this play is very much advantaged by performance; I don't know that I would like it near so much if I had read it without seeing it first. Being a comedy, the parts that are supposed to be funny can come off worse without the comedic sensibilities of whoever performs them. To read it is amusing, but to see it is hilarious. Even still, I love Much Ado.
