Arie Iskandar Iskandar itibaren Altomira, Ariguaní, Magdalena, Colombia
Jostein Gaarder is one of my favourite authors, so I'm torn on what to think of this book- one that carries his name, but is allegedly not written by him. I don't believe the letters are real. Gaarder gives a little tongue-in-cheek mention at the end about the truthfulness of these leters: And indeed, it was incredibly naive of me not to ask the Vatican Library for a receipt at least! This is basically his way of saying, sup guys, this is just a fictional story, like Sophie's World and The Solitaire Mystery. There's also the fact that Floria writes out several parts of St. Augustine's Confessions verbatim, she also meanders throughout the letters, repeating herself a number of times. She keeps falling back to the part where he asks her if she's ever been to Rome. This continual memory flashback bothers me. It doesn't strike me as true. Floria just strikes me also as being too much of a modern woman. Now, who's to say that the woman of the 4th Century and the woman of the 21st Century aren't very much alike in terms of pre-marital sex, the Catholic Church and sin? But ultimately I just found the entire thing to be too unlikely. Now, none of this isn't to say the Gaarder made the whole thing up. It is likely he found a letter in Buenos Aires that was supposedly from Augstine's concubine, and it turned out to be a fake. That's definitely possibly. But Vita Brevis being the true thing? Yeah, unlikely. Still, this is a nice, romantic, bittersweet and very quick read.
This was the first book I read after converting to Christianity back in 1983.