Our first Spanish author in The Nobel Spiral..

Great book. Whilst reading this books I was reminded of the vignettes by Goya sketched during France's invasion of Spain. (I became aware of these whilst reading Susan Sonntag's brilliant Regarding the Pain of Others). A hundred intertwined stories telling of the struggles of Madrid's lower middle classes during the Franco regime.

Sad and disturbing this book paints the scene outstandingly well and one could almost taste the air in the cafe of the unlikeable Dona Rosa.

One of the reviewers says "The Hive is the only novel which sets out to depict that twilight world of a community living under open arrest, where no warders provide even the most inadequate meals, where the nagging enemy is hunger, not starvation, and the Police State is corrupt and inefficient rather than ruthlessly oppressive."

perfectly put,

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Off it flies on the Nobel Spiral.

Book arrived a week ago. Am starting it now. Thanks marko167 for another book!

Sorry its been caught up with me for a while. Its been a busy few months and unfortunately, even though I hoped I'd be able to, I didn't get the chance to read it. I look forward to the next in the ring to get me back on track. Thanks marko167 and sorry for the delay.

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Off it goes :)

Received today. Another author I haven't read so I'm looking forward to this one.

I liked the style of this book - Telling the lives of many characters over the space of a few days. However, there were too many characters for me to keep track of and some weren't developed very much. I'm not really sure what happened at the end either!

As always it's good to try new authors and there's probably enough in this one for me to consider reading another book by this author.

Thanks all for sharing. I will get this book in the post to katrinat later today.

Thanks for sending, I have 1 and a half bookrings to go before I get to this, but as its the hols it shouldn't take too long.

Currently in Brussels. I´m curious to discover this Spanish writer, as he was the uncle of my boss (how weird is that?). Many thanks katrinat for sending it!

On its way to Marsala, with my apologies for taking so long to post it. :0(

Luckily this book got to me, because I moved house and this was send to my old adress!

Anyway, I'm gonna read it straightaway and I'll let you know what I think.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked that it was set in a cafe and that there were a lot of characters. It really felt like you were there and by listening to the stories you would get a glimpse of the life the people lived.

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On its way to the next reader.

Thank you for sharing this book and also sending it. Will be next to read.