Niet echt een strandboek zoals op de voorkant staat. Het begint luchtig maar wordt daarna een stuk zwaarder. Wat een heftige periode moet dat geweest zijn.

Hislop is very detailed, in parts almost too detailed. But overall an encapsulating story.

7/10
«Όταν επέστρεψαν στη βάση εκείνο το βράδυ, λιγότεροι απ´όσοι ήταν το πρωί, ο Αντόνιο συλλογίστηκε πόσο τυχαία ήταν όλα. Για πρώτη φορά από τότε που έγινε μαχητής ένιωσε σαν πιόνι σε σκακιέρα. Ζωές θυσιάζονταν για το καπρίτσιο κάποιου τον οποίο οι περισσότεροι δεν θα γνώριζαν ποτέ.» - Ο Γυρισμός

Apparently the author hasn't heard the old adage: Show, don't tell.

"Eles podem escravizar o meu corpo, mas a mente é minha"

Este livro é uma viagem histórica pela guerra civil espanhola, onde meio milhão de espanhóis morreram numa luta fundamentalista e outros tantos se viram obrigados a fugir e se refugiar fora do seu país, durante décadas.

Não é uma leitura fácil, tem bastantes descrições dos horrores vividos em ambientes de guerra, da perseguição efetuada aos desertores, dos fuzilamentos em massa, das condições precárias dos soldados e das condições desumanas dos presos políticos.

A história de amor impossível da Mercedes e Javier funciona como o fio condutor do passado ao presente. Apreciei muito, não só a contextualização histórica, mas também a descrição dos contextos sociais à época. É uma historia de resiliência e resistência humana muito bem enquadrada.

Eu gostei muito da narrativa que apesar de não abordar um tema fácil, consegue ligar o leitor à história e fixar-nos no seu enredo e na intenção de descobrir o que aconteceu com as personagens.

Não tinha qualquer conhecimento sobre a guerra civil mas o livro despertou a curiosidade e vi-me a efetuar pequenas pesquisas sobre os lugares, o contexto e acontecimentos descritos.

O ponto negativo:
Não me senti ligada à historia da Sónia, a personagem principal contemporânea, que procura as suas raízes em Espanha.

O ponto positivo:
A família Ramirez. Cada um na sua individualidade dá um contributo fundamental à historia.

O livro é de 2008, retrata fundamentalmente um período histórico entre 1936 - 1939/1940, mas facilmente poderia ser enquadrado em qualquer pais do mundo ocidental do século XXI, onde os movimentos fundamentalistas se vêm a proliferar.

5 stars isn't enough for this book. It is truly beautiful and moving. I found my self in tears many times. I felt their joy and their pain with every word. Remarkable characters made all the more life like with the knowledge that this actually happened to so many. As always from this author a story that feels so true. Highly recommended to all!

What worringly started off as Chick-Lit quickly turned into a really interesting history lesson on the brutality and suffering during the Spanish Civil War. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would and I was really taken by the use of the flameco dancing and the warmth of old Miguel.

This book was hard to get through - brutal really. Page after page of war, killing, and a desperate fight the reader knows was eventually lost. The end was poignant though - reading about the way France and England treated and mostly despised the Spanish refugees who fled across the borders just prior to the start of WWII. It's a shame, really, that the cruel opinion many held for those refugees is still the popular opinion in today's political climate.

Oh dear. This just doesn't work at all. The modern-day story wrapped around the historical part is so flimsy and cliched that it would have been better to leave it out altogether and just tell the civil war story. A basic structural flaw was that Miguel simply could not have known all the details given here. Every now and then,Hislop remembers, oops, Miguel is supposed to be telling the story here, so she flips back to the present day for a paragraph so that they can order another coffee. Could he really have told this whole story in such detail over a period of a few hours? It just doesn't ring true.

But if you're going to do that, at least make it a genuine story, not a potted history. Hislop had done her research, but then just regurgitated it onto the page. Large parts of it were just like reading a history book. The characters never left the page to become real people with hopes and desires. It was impossible to feel moved by deaths and imprisonment.

And finally, I don't have a problem with coincidences in novels, or indeed in real life (hey, I enjoy [a:Kate Atkinson|10015|Kate Atkinson|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1253439701p2/10015.jpg], queen of coincidences!). But the coincidences on which this novel relies are just too contrived, and you can see the "twist" coming a mile off. I ended up flipping quickly through the last coupel of hundred pages to have my suspicions confirmed.

But I'm giving it two stars instead of one, because:
1. The descriptions of flamenco are so well done. It's obvious that Hislop is passionate about this dance, and the novel only really comes alive in these passages.
2. A lot of people who like this book say they didn't know anything about the Spanish Civil War. If the popularity of Hislop's work means that more people know about it, that's a good thing. Her heart is in the right place, she did her homework, she just doesn't have the novelistic skill to carry it off.

However, if you want to read a brilliant novel that conveys the true horror and tragedy of the civil war, and its effect on families, don't read this. Read Almudena Grandes' [b:The Frozen Heart|9682371|The Frozen Heart|Almudena Grandes|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328819391s/9682371.jpg|1300100] instead.