Forest Friends in the Cottage
Hello all, and welcome back to the cottage. I feel as though I've said this about every book I read so far, but I hope that it does not come off as disingenuous when I say that this was an intriguing read. Tragically, the Spanish Civil War is not my strongest suit in history--although, I've had to grapple with the discipline many times in order to remember the most basic facts--so I read this novel almost as if it were entirely a work of fiction, accepting the historical facts of the matter as Cercas put them and taking everything in stride as if they were the rules of the story. So instead of following the historical thread of events, I entertained myself by identifying several, somewhat arbitrary connections to previous books that I read throughout our literary journey together--and there were a good few. For instance, Cercas always comes back to the concept of writing--it ties the novel together a bit loosely, I think, because while it seems clear that i...