El pintor de batallas (original 2006; edição 2006)

El protagonista es el propio autor. Habla y trata de los mismos temas con el mismo vocabulario que el autor en cualquier entrevista. En ese sentido mucho de lo que dijo, ya lo habia oido.
La chica del libro, el sueño humedo del autor, guapa, intelectual e inteligente.
Y lo demas, una excusa para mostrar a los dos personajes de arriba. El tercer personaje principal del libro, no entra en conflicto con el pintor, siempre estan de acuerdo en todo.

Al menos los temas que tocan son interesantes. ( )

Vivéncies de la guerra de Bósnia. ( )

Si prefiero aquellos escritores que son capaces de vapulear mi cerebro con una economia total de palabras por que acabo leyendo a Pérez.Reverte todos los años. Creo que realmente no mi importa aportar mi granito de arena a que siga difundiendo su vision realista, desnuda, del mundo y de los seres humanos. Normalmente tambien me consuela leer aquellos pasajes donde más brilla, cuando habla de viejos soldados o marineros que añoran sus andanzas por el mundo, pero de esos no hay en este libro. Lo que si hay es un personaje femenino, torpemente descrito a base de cliches como es habitual en la literatura del autor, y aunque no sea excusa como es habitual siempre que un hombre escribe sobre mujeres o al viceversa.

Tambien en este libro se encuentran sus inacabables descripciones colmadas de terminos tecnicos, que no favorecen al ritmo de la narracion y sobre decir se antojan repetitivas ("motor de arrastre" ... si lo llega a repetir una vez más me abro las venas) por ejemplo:
"al apoyar una Pentax con película de 400 ASA en el marco de la ventana del piso undécimo de un edificio alto y en ruinas —el Sheraton—, manteniendo abierto el obturador durante treinta segundos con el objetivo a 1.8 de diafragma. De ese modo, sobre un solo fotograma de película de 35 milímetros".

Otro de sus recursos tipicos, la referencia a artistas y obras de arte, si resulto mas de mi agrado.
"la pintora Lola Zegrí, alumna de la última época de la Bauhaus, amiga de Duchamp, de Jean Renoir —hizo un papelito en La regla del juego, vestida de seminarista junto a Cartier-Bresson—, de Bonnard y de Picasso."
Una pena que no lo complementase con más reflexiones sobre los comos y los porques de la fotografia, pero supongo que esto es solo una novela y siempre nos quedara la obra de Susan Sontag sobre el tema.

En resumen Perez-Reverte escribe otra novela de Perez-Reverte. ( )

i am still mulling things over in my head...and also wishing we could give ½ stars here on GR because i am feeling in-between on this one and would feel better with it at a 2 ½-star rating. :/

this is a very philosophical novel, and it had a lot of potential. in the end, though, it felt heavy-handed and not very elegant in its delivery. i found this review from the guardian (2007), which seems to reflect many of the same things i was thinking about and feeling while reading the novel. (except the reviewer erroneously notes markovic's child as a daughter, when it was a son.) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/15/fiction

"The Painter of Battles is a strange book, much of its material shoehorned...into its flashbacks, its central dialogue straining under the moral weight placed upon it; it's a messy clash between showing and telling. "

this novel could make for an interesting film or stage adaptation, with the right people - and my brain kept jumping to this idea as i was reading. there's a detached nature to this book which is interesting. on the one hand, with such deep and awful experiences being communicated, it would make sense to have a very emotionally driven story, or a story that results in strong emotional responses. yet that didn't happen with me and i was strongly aware of detachment while reading. but this also makes sense given the idea is touched on during the book, and the fact a war photographer (or this particular war photographer) kept himself emotionally apart from the subjects - people and places - he was capturing on film.

two things i had particular trouble with that i want to mention in this review:
1) the character of olvido - a former model, then photographer who shot high-end and architectural shoots for magazine. she just never became a fully fledged character for me. the best i can guess is that her choice to join faulques as he covers war zones, and then to choose to photograph only objects and not people ties in to her merely being an object herself in this book. the fact of her beauty is repeated again, and again...which brings me to the next issue for me:
2) the translation - i am not sure i trust it? most of the time it seemed okay to fine, but there was a lot of repetition i noticed. and i was constantly wondering how this would read in its original spanish? i feel like, perhaps, the original is mush more beautiful, mate even less heavy-handed, more evocative. but i can't read spanish, so i won't ever know.

so i do feel glad i read the book - i have had it for a while and have heard many raves for other books by pérez-reverte. but i have also read the painter of battles was a departure, and perhaps not his best move/best work. so maybe i will check out [book:The Club Dumas|7194] next. ( )

bookshelves: autumn-2013, fraudio, translation, tbr-busting-2013, art-forms, published-2006, spain, war, revenge, philosophy, teh-brillianz, mystery-thriller
Read from October 07 to 09, 2013

Simon Vance reads.

From the cover: Acclaimed author Arturo Perez-Reverte has earned a distinguished reputation as a master of the literary thriller with his international bestsellers The Club Dumas and The Queen of the South. Now, in this haunting new work, Perez-Reverte has written his most accomplished novel to date. "The Painter of Battles "is a captivating tale of love, war, art, and revenge.

So whilst humming along painting a huge mural depicting war there is a knock at the door *rap rap* and standing there is a man who says...

And the visitor comes everyday and the talk is of morals and war, art and ethics. Hands up who else sees this is Dickens's Christmas Carol all over again without resorting to the metaphysical, and this prize winning photo-journalist has some sticky questions to answer.

Have found that Arturo Pérez-Reverte is consistently to my liking and isn't it wonderful when that happens. Art in historical fiction rings all my bells and this one kept me on the edge of my seat

The Soldier Drinks by Chagall

Goya

4* The Club Dumas
3* The Flanders Panel
3* Captain Alatriste
4* Purity of Blood
3* The Sun over Breda
5* The Painter of Battles

Crossposted Booklikes, aNobii, LibraryThing GoodReads ( )