I should state for the record that I already vibrate at a sympathetic frequency with this novel, bursting into unaccountable tears every fifteen pages or so--and at different places each time.
The experience of suddenly gaining new ears for an author is one I can perhaps best compare to the effortless French fluency I sometimes achieve in dreams.
That I'm no longer immortal raises questions about the pursuit I've more or less given my life to—reading: If you can't take it with you, what's the point?
In the context of a government of men, Cercas suggests, real and durable greatness is marked by compromises, trade-offs, disappointments, and missed opportunities, rather than their absence. Not to give away the ending, but maybe politics is more like real life than we'd like to imagine.
This is a terrific novel. I couldn't help wishing, as I did with so much of what I read this year, that my old man was still around, that I might recommend it to him.