Marina
Ratings45
Average rating4.1
In May 1980, fifteen-year-old Óscar Drei suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in the old quarter of Barcelona. For seven days and nights no one knows his whereabouts. It all began the previous autumn when, while exploring the dilapidated grounds of what seemed to be an abandoned house filled with portraits, he inadvertently stole a gold pocket watch. Thus begins Oscar's friendship with Marina and her father Herman Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Óscar to the gardens of the nearby cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the fourth Sunday of each month. At 10 a.m., a coach drives up to the cemetery and a woman with her face shrouded, wearing gloves, and holding a single rose is helped down from the coach and walks over to a nameless gravestone, where she sets down the flower, pauses for a moment, and then returns to the coach. The gravestone bears no marking but the outline of a strange-looking butterfly with open wings. On one of their subsequent walks Oscar and Marina spot the same woman and determine to follow her. Thereupon begins their journey into the woman's past, and that of the object of her devotion. It is a journey that takes them to the heights of a forgotten, postwar-Barcelona society, of now aged or departed aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons; and into the depths of the city's mysterious underground of labyrinthine sewers, corrupt policemen, beggars' hovels, and criminal depravity.
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Nos mandaron leer este libro en clase de lengua, al principio no me gustó. Había algo sobre la manera de escribir del autor que no me acababa de enganchar. Finalmente, me acabé acostumbrando a su técnica y el libro me acabo gustando. La historia, al principio, es un poco lenta y desesperador a la hora de leer. No obstante, la obra va cogiendo ritmo y es más agradable.
Es mucho mas oscuro, gótico y deprimente que el resto de sus obras. Me gustó la forma en la que se entrelazan las historias de Oscar y Marina con la de Mijail y Eva, además de ese clásico toque de misterio que nos invita a no despegarnos de la lectura. Éste es un libro corto pero sustancioso. El misterio te atrapa en cada palabra y el dolor de los personajes te consume como si fuese propio. El final fue doloroso y desgarrador y en cierta parte, te hace sentir afortunado de tener una vida “normal”. Me encantó este libro y confirma una vez más el por qué Carlos Ruiz Zafón es uno de mis escritores favoritos.
“Marina once told me that we only remember what never really happened. It would take me a lifetime to understand what those words meant. But I suppose I'd better start at the beginning, which in this case is the end.”
Oscar Drai is an apathetic student at a boarding school in Barcelona in 1980. While he isn???t too excited about his studies, he is enamored with the old quarter of Barcelona where his school resides, and he escapes to explore the city every chance that he gets. When we first meet Oscar, he has just been picked up by the police because he???s been missing from school for a week. They find him confused and walking dazedly around the city. He is quickly processed at the police station and sent back to school. Then he tells us the story of the strange and tragic events that have just happened to him.
It all started when Oscar heard beautiful music coming from what he ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/marina/
