BOOK REVIEW WITH AN OPEN HEART Author: Elvira Lindo From the reader report by: Anette Lang-Coiro By A corazón abierto the author, who is celebrated for her children’s literature, presents an affectionate and sometimes humorous exploration of the life of her parents. Technically skilfully she succeeds with presenting a portrait of an entire generation, and many German readers may be supposed to identify parallels to their own parents. […] Still long after their death, the author is preoccupied with the characters of her parents whom she repeatedly attempts to approach, in A corazón abierto, from different angles, by way of different pledges and reflections. […] Whereas in the continuous text the author hardly ever moves away from the repertoire of the essay, she makes use of different kinds of text to be able to consolidate or repeat things which have already been said. Precisely the repetition provides the text with an almost musical level and sometimes resembles the chorus of a song. […] Also the prose poems, which sometimes resemble the choir of Greek tragedy, provide A corazón abierto with a theatrical touch. […] Although some things remain sketchy, whereas other scenes are somewhat strained, on the other hand, still this text is a work which knows how to combine different narration techniques and language styles, thus producing an almost musical final result. Topically, by choosing the generation of her parents, certainly the author hit a universal subject: the way in which the traumas of the post-war period left their marks, obvious to anybody, on the biographies of the older generation, this may be supposed to be an accessible topic also in Germany.
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