Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Teaser Tuesday - May 31


Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:
  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
  • You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!
Gregorius hesitated. The Liceu, as Agostinha had found out, had not been a religious school.
Very gnomic! Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon I've just finished this and am still thinking it over - I think it's a fascinating story - or is it just confusing. The story of Portugal in the 20th century and a book within a novel. The pianist Maria João Pires hovers around the text, sometimes mentioned and then in the name of another. I might give it a slower and more connected re-read. Here's a review:
It is a last chance for Gregorius to round-off his own heretofore inert life by scouring the landscape of a man who, in spite of his own unfulfilled ambitions, lived inside the bone-marrow of life at its most intense levels. If Gregorius wasn’t able to have it in own life, he is willing to live off the scraps of recounted memories and letters of someone else.

And Gregorius is even more willing to take a last-minute risk of spontaneity by walking out of the school where he teaches, packing his clothes, and taking a train to Lisbon.
I've just noticed that my second hand copy of this book has a mysterious phone number written on the first page! (you'll need to read at least the first chapter to understand this!)

No comments: