Johny Venegas Venegas itibaren بني عطية، Yemen
Sweet and tender story of a little boys real journey to heaven and back. I've also listened to several interviews with Colton Burpo and his dad Todd. Colton seems to be a mature and serious young man beyond his years. Excellent read. I highly recommend. I shed some tears with this one. Own on my nook.
One of the first things I did after coming back home from my summer trip, is grabbing Ernesto Sabato's Tunnel for the second time. I had first read it in early 2008. It was in my head throughout the summer. I felt that I have missed the book and I need to re-read it. By it, I mean its mood, its characters, its amiable yet aggressive narrative style. The Tunnel is simply a great novella. It talks about one of the main reasons behind literary production: human loneliness and the search for a connection with the eternal. The main character is a painter, Juan Pablo Castel, who gets obsessed with one of his gallery's visitors, Maria. This obsession with Maria takes up most of the pages and is tiring for us readers, yet so intense that it becomes contagious. Life or existence to Juan Pablo is like Maria, and he doesn't seem to understand it. In one instant he is laying his head on her lap by the shore "like a baby." In another, he is violently grabbing her arm to get her to confess about something that his doubt created. And, finally, in another instance he murders her. (dont worry this is not a spoiler, it is actually the first line of this book.) This crazy relationship and this obsession is all in Juan Pablo's head and heart and in his confusion. It is the tunnel that he has created or was born into. A tunnel that is parallel to everything and never seems to intersect with anything but his loneliness. With all this being said, the main attraction of the novella, for me, is its impeccable enthusiasm. Imagine, for example, Albert Camus' The Stranger, Meursault, but with all the enthusiasm. I can say that Sabato's Juan Pablo Castel is Camus' Meursault but in the opposite direction, with an overdose of enthusiasm towards his loneliness and confusion instead of Meursault's lethal apathy. After reading this book for the second time, I feel energized, enthusiastic, and in the same time melancholic. The exact feelings that I wanted to remind myself of.