Severina

by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Danilo Manera (Translator)

Un giovane libraio aspirante scrittore sorprende una ragazza di singolare bellezza a rubare testi raffinati e andarsene dribblando abilmente la barriera antitaccheggio. Non la ferma, si limita ad annotare i titoli sottratti, nella speranza che lei torni. Presto la potenziale nemica diventa la sua ossessione: le parla, la segue, la bacia dopo una consenziente perquisizione tra gli scaffali, le chiede il nome: Severina. Nonostante cerchi di ricostruirne la personalità attraverso il catalogo delle sue scelte, sulla sua sfuggente vita scopre poco: abita in una pensione con quello che sembra l’anziano padre, il quale legge con lei tutti i libri prelevati nelle librerie e paga il conto quando i proprietari lo reclamano. Il libraio si trasferisce nella stessa pensione per starle più vicino, ma invano. Tra le pagine dell’esistenza di Severina si cela un mistero. Severina è la storia, che fluttua con freschezza chagalliana, di due passioni intrecciate: l’amore e i libri. Due passioni che colpiscono irrimediabilmente e conducono in un luogo dove regna una stirpe di nocchieri in navigazione lungo le maree della letteratura.

Genres: Fiction, Books About Books, Contemporary, Novella, Spanish Literature, Latin American, Literature

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Rodrigo Rey Rosa is perhaps the most prominent writer on the Guatemalan literary scene. Along with the work of writers like Roberto Bolaño, Horacio Castellanos Moya, and Fernando Vallejo, Rey Rosa’s fiction has been widely translated and internationally acclaimed. His books include Dust on Her Tongue, The Beggar’s Knife, and The Pelcari Project, all of which were translated into English by the late Paul Bowles. In addition to his many novels and story collections, Rey Rosa has translated books by Bowles, Norman Lewis, François Augiéras, and Paul Léautaud.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

She seemed to be genuinely afraid of people who cleaned the houses of others. One day I asked her if she could tell me why.

"They can know all about you, but you don't know anything about them."

I was thinking: that's what our relationship is like.

this is an unusual and jagged little love story about a bookstore owner who becomes obsessed with a beautiful and enigmatic shoplifter. he watches her steal from him on several different visits, dutifully cataloging a list of the titles missing from his shelves after she leaves, but putting off a confrontation, building up this whole romantic story about her in his head. He learns that his is not the only bookstore in town that she frequents and pilfers, and this only increases his interest, until eventually he does confront her. they begin an uneasy relationship; he is infatuated with her, while she is secretive and mysterious with him, doling out half-truths and uttering world-weary declarations such as "life is shit."

How many nights did I spend fantasizing about our next encounter? I imagined her traveling from country to country, visiting bookstore after bookstore.

More than once I thought about talking to Ahmed. I wanted to know which books she had stolen from him, apart from the Berber stories. But I was too embarrassed to call.

I kept going over the books that she had taken from me and trying to imagine the complete list of every title she had ever stolen. It was as if I thought this would help solve the mystery of a life that seemed bizarre and fantastic to me.

Ahmed had spoken of an illness. But I felt that there must have been another explanation, which I associated with an uncompromising approach to life: absolute freedom, a radical realization of the ideal that I too had adopted one fine day - the ideal of living by and for books.

There were black days when those fantasies faded away, leaving me prey to despondency and remorse for a life half-lived. I would think: "You're kidding yourself; she's just a common thief, or, at best, a sad case, a kleptomaniac."

and yet, they do manage, within this brief novella, to love and lose and love again. to betray and to redeem and to accept and to live by and for books, uncompromisingly. and also … murrrrderrrrr….

it's just a little slip of a book, most of which hinges on the relationship, so - for me - not super-riveting, but there is one really lovely moment towards the end that kind of made the whole book worth it for me. hint: borges.

and PSA-time!! shoplifting is bad, and shoplifting books is very, very bad. you don't want to turn into some carefully jaded "life is shit"-spouting caricature of a human, do you?? because that attitude is only cool in smiths songs.

come to my blog!

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Severina is a novella about a beautiful young woman who steals books and the co-owner of a bookstore she steals from who falls in love with her.

It's basically a minimalist love story with some musings of books here and there. I imagine that if you took the time to jot down, think about and maybe read all of the books that the young thief steals that you would wind up fairly well read and maybe open up some more elements to the story, but the majority of the books probably aren't available in America, or if you could get your hands of them aren't translated from Spanish.

The Latin Americans seem to have the market cornered on writing beautifully about the ardor of literature. Time and again they seem to capture that feeling that reading and Literature are important and make you feel like maybe you aren't just wasting your time and life reading all those books you read.

A few weeks before Christmas Karen and I were in the bookstore at Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market is an upscale food mall, with a couple of non-food stores here and there. It's the kind of place where you buy things for more money than you buy them elsewhere and you feel ok about it because you are spending that extra money on the high quality of the stuff the various shops sell, or at least you tell yourself that it's better than similar stuff you'd buy at other places for less money. In the bookstore (which sells books at the prices that other brick and mortar stores sell them for (the cover price, which is the actual price of the book, and isn't willy-nilly decided on by the store, but rather the publisher, so no, the store isn't 'robbing' you just because you see the book being sold at pretty much a loss on Amazon, and yes Mr. Asshole who decided to start yelling at me recently over how unfair it was that costs like shipping the book, rent for the store, my salary and other operating costs are included in a book you buy in the store because no, we aren't all living in a fantasy world (or in the questionable economy of Bezos-land) where we just give you your book at exactly the cost it took to print a book, but thanks for yelling at me!) there was a sign asking you please not to steal their books. The sign was pretty funny, it said something like, you are not Roberto Bolano, there is nothing romantic about stealing books, you are shopping here in this place it means you probably have money. Stealing books just hurts the store, we are trying to carry interesting books by smaller publishers most bookstores don't carry but when you steal these books for us it makes it difficult for us to stay in business. Thank you for not stealing.

I don't work for a small bookstore. I work for the biggest chain, in the biggest store and I run what I'm guessing is one of the biggest fiction sections in the country. I carry lots and lots of books that you wil not find in any other store in the company. I know it's considered like you are sticking it to the man in some way when you steal books from my company, and I know you think you can get away with it, but I have to ask, please don't steal my books. It makes my life much more difficult, and if you are really interested in a book by a small publisher or an obscure title you find in a store, it's really so much better than you buy the book and lend your support to the creation of more quality books.

When you steal you are just being a selfish asshole, and a hypocrite if you then want to bemoan the quality of books being made and how unfair it is that authors and small publishers can't survive in the age of big conglomerate publishing. When you buy a book you help that title stay on the shelf. You give it a chance to be seen by someone else. There are wonderful places called libraries and they have this amazing service called inter-library loans that make it possible to get for free just about any book you want to read. It's an amazing service for those, who like the narrator in this book, begin to find the trading of money for books to be distasteful. And again, you are doing something positive by using the library, you are helping their numbers out, showing more people are using the library and allowing them to possibly get more funding. Win, win!

So, in books it's romantic to be a shoplifter of books, but in reality you're just being selfish. And the next time you are in a bookstore and you are looking for a book that you the computer says there is a copy of and you can't find it—the bookseller will probably give you some garbage about the book being misplaced or how receiving errors happen, but that's just a way of avoiding saying the book you want to read has been stolen. So instead of trying to ruin to the poor bookseller's day with a temper tantrum thank the thief.

[Elizabeth (Plant Based Bride) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It wasn't the first time I had let a bookish impulse carry me beyond the bounds of reason."

A fascinating novella about identity, love, lies, and the power of books - Rosa pulls us into a world of dreamlike vignettes centred around our unnamed narrator, bookseller by day, aspiring writer by night, and the target of his affections, the mysterious Severina, who visits the shop to steal an eclectic array of books.

With literary allusions galore, double meanings, and the unexpected need to bury a body, this novella is both a love letter to the literary and a surrender to the incomprehensibility and vulnerability of love itself.

One thing I will say is that several moments early on fell heavily into the male gaze in an uncomfortable way. While these moments took away a bit from my enjoyment of the story, I did appreciate that the author did not seem to be endorsing the actions of his narrator, rather judging them.

I can't wait to read most (or all) of the books referenced in this novella before returning to get even more out of these jam-packed 89 pages!

"Bookshops are infested with ideas. Books are quivering, murmuring creatures."


Trigger/Content Warnings: death, stalking, medical content

You can watch me talk about all the books I read in February as I set up my reading journal here: https://youtu.be/NY7bgSmoggM

You can find me on...
Youtube | Instagram | TikTok

You can join our book club over on Patreon...
PBB Book Club

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long raven black hair, attractive, seductive, no identity. She travels with an elderly man supposedly her grandfather, with a fake I.D. They live by and for books. She steals books wherever she goes. They read them.

He watches her. Can't take his eyes off her. By the cash register he notes which books were taken, when. Does nothing about it. Crossing the boundary between pleasure and the imagination of desire's hope, he becomes infatuated with her, falls in love. She returns his favors?

Deception is the default his characters and this writer returns to within the suspense of this elegant 86 page novel. Rodrigo Rey Rosa's style is Marias-lite. Minus the obsessions and digressions he thoroughly knows the precise word to be placed, where, when, with never an effort revealed at choreographing the melodic poetic prose. Without a nod from the writer, the reader, he sustains the suspension of disbelief coming within a breath of surrealist magic only to evaporate within the story.

Severina, a book which can be completed within the span of a day or many years, is translated by the award winning poet, Chris Andrews. Including Bolano and Aira he has translated many Latin American authors.

There are three ways in which I read. The choice is but a command from the material. At a calculated distance I read slow interpreting and analyzing. The next is to frenzy my way through riding the curl of the plot's wave-finishing, I feel I have conquered, not mastered. Last, within writing that is poetic, filled with the cadence of meaning, the words are read aloud within my mind. Whose voice? I'm not sure. It is essential I avoid any type of exorcism for this is the pace I listen to these precious words, Rey Rosas' words. The harmonies of Severina's musical notations flow with a suspense driven plot. Never is one at odds or battling the other. Even though only 86 pages the suspense is fueled in two separate directions, successfully. Like many quality Spanish speaking writers this fusion seems to be stocked within their writerly tools.

In the end I am left, due to not having been inoculated as a child, with BV or better known as, Bookish Virus. I must now be reduced from the ether of high art to a pup waiting by the large living room window for its master to come home. Soon, any day, any moment, the big brown UPS truck will fill the pane of glass and the smiling delivery man will saunter down the steps with my box filled with Rodrigo Rey Rosa's 3 other novels, all translated by Paul Bowles, (Interesting.)

It's stormy outside, raining. The floor to ceiling red brick fireplace framed by high bookshelves on either side, is lit. One eye prompted to the large window, I wait.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent novella recommended by Bolano (and Goodreads' own Eric Bies). I've been in a reading funk lately, apt to abandon after fifty pages, but this one's only 86 pages aerated with plentiful dialogue and space breaks. Easy reading but not at all degraded. Seemed like it was set in Antigua, Guatemala, not exactly sure. I was able to vividly co-create/activate the text in my imagination, see the characters and scenes, without the author getting in the way. As Eric mentioned in his review that led me to find this, there's something about it that suggests formal perfection for a novella of the sort. Also, since this site is the likely locale for bibliophiles, the bibliophiles in this brief book may appeal to a lot of people on here. There's also an air of Borgesian mystery, philosophical asides about truth etc, but mainly it's a simple love story. Need to read a lot more Rodrigo Rey Rosa. (Also, this is translated by Chris Andrews, whose translations of Bolano and Aira you've probably read and enjoyed.)

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

a slim, bibliocentric novella about a book proprietor and his infatuation with the elusive young woman who thieves his wares, severina is an enticing little tale by guatemalan author/translator (and paul bowles's literary executor) rodrigo rey rosa. the seventh of his works to be translated into english, severina weds a love of books and reading with the intrigue and passion of amorous desire and longing. rey rosa's story is an alluring one - perhaps all the more accessible and charming to anyone who's ever slung books for a living (or been enamored of another based solely on their insatiable appetite for the printed word).

it wasn't the first time i had let a bookish impulse carry me away beyond the bounds of reason. on the way home i kept laughing at myself, thinking of flaubert. i had been impetuous before: when i got together with my friends to set up a bookstore; when i decided to become a writer; when i ran away from the family home; when... but this was different: for the first time in my life, i was embarking on a purely sentimental adventure.

in a recent bomb interview with francisco goldman, rey rosa spoke about writing severina following a break-up, "yes, the novel became a sort of coded message to my ex-lover. my relationship to literature is very superstitious; i see it as a type of spell. i was waiting for this message to do its trick." friends with salvadoran author horacio castellanos moya and admired by bolaño (whom he met a few years before his passing), rey rosa's works are all somewhat disparate in theme, style, and scope. contrasting severina with, say, the intensity and violence of the good cripple demonstrates that rey rosa is creative and comfortable enough to write on many different subjects. severina is a quick, but rewarding read. as easily as we can be swept away by the charms, curiosity, and amatory promise of a new love, so, too, can we by literature and its often enigmatic purveyors.

"we have been called secret agents and confidence tricksters; we have been taken for spies using books to transmit coded messages; it has been said that we collect editions or copies of books related to all sorts of crimes and scandals, that we purvey pornography of one sort or another, or what have you. but the only thing we do consistently is use books to make a living. let me tell you something. one of my uncles - he was crazy, it's true, but he also had moments of genius - believed, or said he believed, that books, the objects that we call books, are animated by a kind of collective spirit. like machines and computers in science-fiction fantasies, and the plants from which drugs are extracted, and even certain metals, like gold and iron. he talked about how books struggle for domination in certain regions of the planet, a phenomenon whose trends and flows could be tracked using one of those maps with colored arrows to indicate things like the spreading of ethnic groups or languages over the course of history. migrations, invasions, outbreaks, extinctions. there are wars between different kinds or genres of books, he said. and, as in real wars, the best don't always win; but for us, in the end, there are no losers, although they all fade away. we use these ebbs and flows the way a sailor uses ocean currents. we exploit them as best we can, beyond literary good and evil, so to speak. we, that is, my granddaughter and i, are still navigating the tides and currents of books."

*rendered from the spanish by chris andrews (bolaño & aira)

[Jelena Roksandic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recenzija na blogu.

[dianne b. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty flawless story, well told. A man swept into a dream, only slightly magically.

“For the first time in my life, I was embarking on a purely sentimental adventure.”

Lest you think this devolves into romantic schmaltz, a few lines later he is reading Dario:
Executioners of ideals have afflicted the Earth,
mankind is imprisoned in a well of darkness
along with the violent mastiffs of hatred and war.

Severina, and her traveling companion, whose role remains undefined for a frustrating while, sound like gypsies, exceedingly smooth, peripatetic, only taking what they’re “given”.

In my neighborhood in San Francisco a couple of decades ago, a scam run by self described gypsies was a “money blessing”. This was most successfully used against newly arrived Chinese immigrants who often kept their fortunes at home, not yet trusting banks. Confidence was gained and the immigrant was convinced that their fortune would be multiplied many times over, having been “blessed”. Of course, this meant handing the fortune to the Blesser - who was never seen again. When caught, one was quoted as saying, “If she was dumb enough to give it to me…” Severina brought this to mind.

We wonder who they really are, and then whether it would all be easier if we didn’t care; if we could just change that, when we leave there?

Quite a delightful existence traipsing the world, nicking its wonders to share, living on god-knows-what; her phermones - unsettled, uncapturable, unknowable - enrapturing booksellers who forgive her trespasses.

And her obsession with books driving them to madness, and driving this delicious story. Not one wasted word.

(and a round of applause for the translator!)

[Susana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seleccioné este libro por dos razones: un autor guatemalteco joven altamente recomendado y el tema, el amor entre dos amantes de los libros, el dueño de una librería y una ladrona de libros.

Por una parte sentí mucha envidia del protagonista dueño de la librería, junto con otros amigos, no como negocio, si no como manera de garantizar el acceso a los libros que querían:

"... un modelo extremo de existencia, con la absoluta libertad, una forma radical de realizar un ideal que yo mismo me había propuesto un día: vivir por y para los libros"

Pero se trata de un amor "con plomo en el ala", una mujer que no puede estar mucho tiempo en el mismo sitio, que necesita robar los libros aunque tenga con que pagarlos, poco a poco lo que parecía un "lindo romance" comienza a tener elementos más y más sórdidos, hasta un final hace el que me temía se dirigía el libro.

Seguiré buscando otros libros de Rodrigo Rey Rosa, porque escribe bien, muy bien.

[Stacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good novella centering on a love of books. A small treat if you are interested in modern Guatemalan literature.

For some reason, part of the spirit or style of the book reminded me of Astragal.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bookshops are infested with ideas. Books are quivering, murmuring creatures. That’s what one of my business partners used to say. He was a poet, quite a clever guy (though not as clever as he thought), and likeable enough. There’s something to it: the three little Russian books stood there on the shelf next to the cash register for several days, murmuring, quivering, preserving her memory, but she didn’t return. Those were eventful days, or rather I heard that they’d been eventful (there was a rash of lynchings in the inland villages and a coup in a neighboring country, cocaine became the world’s number one illicit substance, stagnant water was discovered on Mars, and Pluto definitively lost its status as a planet), my life having shrunk once more to the ambit of books; I had become another specimen of that sad type, the book seller with literary aspirations."

Severina is a beautiful, highly literary and very short (86 well-spaced pages) book about ... books, wonderfully brought into English by Chris Andrews, Roberto Bolano's translator.

The setting is Guatemala, but the wider troubles of society, more discussed in Rey Rosa's other novels, are kept deliberately in the background here:"(There are far more serious problems here, but I don't want to talk about them now.)"

The unnamed first-person narrator is a part-owner of a bookstore, albeit motivated by bibliophilia rather than business acumen ("we didn't have anything better to do and we were tired of paying through the nose for books chosen by and for others, as 'eccentrics' like us are forced to do in provincial cities").

The "she" mentioned is the eponymous Severina, Ana Severina Bruguera Blanco, to give her full name, or at least the name she gives to the narrator ("'He doesn't have proof of identity you know, nor do I'. 'You don't have passports?'. She smiled. 'Yes we have several passports, they are all fake.'"). And the Russian books are set as a trap to catch her:

"I noticed her the first time she came into the store, and right from the start I picked her for a thief, although that day she didn't take anything."

But the bookshop owner isn't interested in retrieving stolen novels, but rather as a way to gain access to the, then unknown, girl who he immediately is attracted to "(perfectly rounded knees they were, shaped with evident care)"

Severina is an artful thief ("the alarm didn't go off, I wondered how she'd done it") and the narrator learns "You're not the first bookseller to fall in love with her". And the rest of this brief novel is devoted to his pursuit of Severina, who remains an enigma, even as he gets close to her.

"Ahmed [a fellow bookseller and under Severina's spell] had spoken of an illness. But I felt there must have been another explanation, which I associated with an uncompromising approach to life: absolute freedom, a radical realisation of the ideal that I too had adopted one fine day - the ideal of living by and for books.

There were black days when those fantasies faded away, leaving me pray to despondancy and remorse for a life half-lived. I would think: "You're kidding yourself; she's just a common thief, or, at best, a sad case, a kleptomaniac"

With clear religious parallels, Ana Severina and her (ostensible) grandfather claim to be from a wandering, historical and entrepreneurial tribe of book lovers. They believe themselves descendants of Lydians, who Herodutus, in The Histories, records as having invented dice games, before moving to "the land of the Ombricans", the present day Umbria, where Ana claims to have spent her childhood.

As Ana Severina's Grandfather explains to the narrator:

"Books have always been my life. Both my father and grandfather lived exclusively from booms...and I'm not speaking metaphorically: books are our sole means of substinence.

We have been accused of all sorts of vices and misdemanours, even crimes.

But the only thing we do consistently is use books to make a living."

The religious parallels are clear, (in my words) a People of Books as opposed to the People of The Book. Severina even claims to have entered the Holy of Holies, Borges's library, and her most valued relic is a copy of the Koran, valued for the annotations in the margins:

"'I took this book, just the one, from Borges's library. The notes are his. There, in the margin, he started writing one of his stories.'

''The Mirror of...', is this possible?' said Ahmed, without taking his eyes off the book. 'Are you trying to trick me?'

'You decide', Severina said calmly."

For such a short novel, it is packed with literary games and allusions. The bookshop takes it's name from a Cervantes play (La Entretenida) and Severina's surname Bruguera refers to one of Borges publishers, to give just two) and the list of books that Severina steals from the narrator and many other shops is intriguing to both the reader and indeed the narrator:

"I kept going over the books that she had taken from me and trying to imagine the complete list of every title she had ever stolen. It was as if I thought this would help solve the mystery of a life that seemed bizarre and fantastic to me."

Overall, a beautiful and thought-provoking work, packing more into it's brief pages than most books do into 4 or 5 times that length. Rey Rosa is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, following the wonderful African Shore (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...?). There is a beautiful review by Raphael Rerolle in Le Monde which expressed what he achieves better than I ever could "His work is extraordinarily precise, mythic, intriguing; it's literature without useless gestures, where beauty seems to be born of it's author's curious inclination toward silence."

Bolano was of course also a big fan of Rey Rosa saying he “is the most rigorous writer of my generation, the most transparent, the one who knows best how to weave his stories, and the most luminous of all.”, albeit Bolano does seem to have been an extraordinarily generous commentator on fellow authors who he valued.

[Billy O'Callaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bookshop owner (and this book's narrator) notices that one of his customers, a beautiful young woman who he has fallen for on first sight, is stealing books from him. Instead of immediately challenging her, and afraid of frightening her away, he starts to feed her habit. When he does finally confront her, they fall into a relationship of sorts, but while their connections are, physically, everything he desires, emotionally she remains cut off, and an entire mystery to him. Bit by bit, he comes to know her, but every forward step brings new questions to light. She lives and travels with an old man who may be her lover, her father or even her grandfather; she spends her days travelling between bookshops and stealing from them, and she has even once visited Borges' library, and possibly lifted something from those hallowed shelves.
A lovely surprise. I was given a copy of this book by a friend and fell headlong into it. The writing is beautiful, the characters, particularly the endlessly enigmatic Severina, wonderfully painted, and the story cleverly and lovingly layered. It's a book for book-lovers and, for that reason in itself, a joy.

[Marianna the Booklover · Rating 2 out of 5]

Miałam dziś luźniejszy poranek, więc do śniadania przeczytałam "Severinę" i niewiele z tego wynikło. Sympatyczna opowiastka, ale nie poruszyła mnie specjalnie. Pan Rey Rosa napisał jednak parę innych książek, więc dam mu jeszcze kiedyś szansę :)

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up blindly, well partially, taking the Bolaño blurb on the back for something like gospel. And, well, this is a surprising book, a perfect novella.

[Maria Regina Paiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Me fijé en ella la primera vez que entró, y desde entonces sospeché que era una ladrona, aunque esa vez no se llevó nada". Con esa primera línea, Rodrigo Rey Rosa me capturó, sin soltarme hasta cerrar el libro. "Severina" es la historia de una ladrona de libros y del librero que se enamora de ella. Amar a Severina es jugar con fuego: por momentos da calor y por otros, quema. De ella sabemos poco y lo que sabemos lo ponemos en duda, pero lo que está claro es que se trata de una seductora indómita y fascinante que se sale con la suya una y otra vez.

Me gustó tanto este libro que me convirtió en fan de Rey Rosa y ya regresé a la librería a comprar otra de sus novelas. Además de ser un relato muy entretenido, la historia contiene una extensa lista de libros sugeridos, de los cuales investigué todos y compré algunos. Bastante nerd, por cierto, Rey Rosa... :)

[Marco Díaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wonderful short novel has such captivating prose that it will have you turning the pages diligently until its end. It is almost like a lived dream in which the limits between reality and unreality blur. I will have to agree with Roberto Bolaño's comment on this one: "Reading Rey Rosa is not only learning how to write but also an invitation to let yourself be drawn by sinister or fantastic stories."

[Caroline]

okay, but not up to what I expected.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Główny bohater, księgarz i aspirujący pisarz, spotyka pewnego dnia tajemniczą piękność. Owa kobieta wpada do jego księgarni i kradnie książki. To zachowanie powtarza się kilka razy, aż księgarzowi udaje się z nią porozmawiać. Fascynacja Severiną przeradza się niemal w obsesję, a mężczyzna zaczyna podejmować nieracjonalne decyzje, by jak najczęściej móc ją spotykać.

Ciąg dalszy: https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot....

[kelly]

a slender novella that reveres the mystique and finds power in it, as opposed to the majority of novels whose tension derives from exposing, unravelling or unveiling something (whether it is a secret, a psychological explanation for a type of behaviour or a femme fatale). for that reason alone i am inclined to like severina which utilises the central romance between a pickpocket and a besotted bookseller as an allegory for the strong allure fiction, with its infinite potential, holds for bibliophiles (lots of allusions to borges and many others i missed!). bolaño spoke highly of this and it's not hard to see why — although the amour fou aspects of the story felt somewhat lacking compared to marnie, another story involving erotic obsession and thievery. perhaps because the narrator took on more of an observer role (although you could argue that this was necessary to preserve the mystery and that it's up to us to read behind the lines).

[Mirjam]

She seemed to be genuinely afraid of people who cleaned the houses of others. One day I asked her if she could tell me why.

"They can know all about you, but you don't know anything about them."

I was thinking: that's what our relationship is like.

[Antonella Imperiali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Severina è una bella ragazza ma è strana, enigmatica, sfrontata e schiva allo stesso tempo. Entra in libreria e, con scaltrezza, ruba volumi senza peraltro far suonare gli allarmi. Il gestore della libreria se ne accorge ma non le dice nulla, anzi segna i libri rubati nella speranza che lei torni presto. Vuole capire perché lo fa e perché sceglie titoli e testi particolari. Anche perché la sua non è la sola libreria che lei visita.
Un giorno però la ferma e chiede spiegazioni, assicurandole che non la denuncerà, poi la segue e scopre dove e con chi abita...
Inizia così un rapporto controverso fatto di piccole cose e di tanti segreti da svelare; lui è innamorato, lei forse... di sicuro ama i libri, ama soprattutto leggerli insieme e qualcuno, discuterne. Ma cerca anche sicurezza e protezione, soprattutto complicità in certe situazioni delicate.
In fondo è una storia dolce, poetica quasi, per cui vale la pena correre qualche rischio, per cui vale la pena cambiare anche il corso della propria vita.

Bella prosa, quella di Rey Rosa, in grado di creare suggestioni con poche precise parole.

3,5/5

[Leonardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Encontré esta pequeña novela en el sótano de la biblioteca de Koernerg. Era una edición de bolsillo traducida, creo que por un profesor de Yale. Leí la primera mitad y luego regrese a casa. devolví el paperback al carrito de libros sin prestar. Al día siguiente, regresé con la ganas de terminarla. No estaba ahí. Al tercer día, volví y terminé solo unas pocas páginas donde la había dejado, esta vez en español. Es una pequeña alegría que atesoraré. Me alegra haber descubierto a Reynaldo Rey Rosa, un apuesto escritor de prosa precisa y elegante.

[Carlos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Una novela que no llega a diferenciarse del cliché de enamorarse perdidamente. Por lo menos Rey reconoce que no hay necesidad de alargar una historia tan conocida. Quizá lo mejor que se pueda decir es que las circunstancias de los protagonistas son un poco menos comunes de lo normal. De todas formas, si las historias de amor, en sí mismas, no captan tu atención, esta novela no tendrá mucho para ti.

[Suni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un libraio si fa saccheggiare il negozio da una ladra di libri perché è gnocca. Ne diventa ossessionato ma lei sparisce, la aspetta per mesi e quando la ritrova si accolla pure il vecchio, ora in coma, che vive con lei (forse il padre, forse il marito… chissà).
Poi la trama diventa ancora più scema, mentre resta costante il fastidio per il continuo riferimento ai libri, al grande amore per i libri, alla vita all’insegna dei libri, i libri i libri i libri, purché questi libri siano di una pretenziosità estenuante.
Unica nota di interesse: siamo in Guatemala.

[alanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

bro was somehow self aware and clocked her as a MPDL (manic pixie dream latina). she got bro absolutely whipped tho and he had nobody but himself to blame.. it was only right he bagged the baddie. or did he?? :O

[Alex Kudera · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://kudera.blogspot.com/2022/09/t...

[valentina · Rating 1 out of 5]

manic pixie dream girl a la tortix

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Book Thief

Rodrigo Rey Rosa was an unknown name to me until I picked up this book at random in the library and, after reading the text, consulted the very helpful introduction by the translator Chris Andrews. Born in 1958, he is regarded as Guatemala's leading literary author, holding a place in the center of the younger generation of Latin American writers. Even more persuasive than that are the names of three late great writers associated with his work: Paul Bowles, who translated three of his early novels and appointed him a literary executor; Roberto Bolaño, who called himself an "assiduous reader" of his work; and Jorge Luis Borges, whose influence shines through every page of his writing.

Not that this slim novella has anything like the heft of a literary landmark. Its premise, though offbeat, is so simple as to be almost artificial. A bookstore owner in Guatemala City notices a young dark-haired woman coming into his store and slipping off with one or two books, somehow evading the alarm system. Not ordinary books either: the first day, they are some translations from the Japanese; then a few volumes of The Thousand and One Nights; and some days later, some high-end editions of Russian literature. At this point he tackles her, but lets her go; he is falling in love with her enigma. He doesn't know her name for sure; she says Ana, but when he tracks her down to her pension, she is registered as Severina. He discovers that she is with a much older man; she says her father, but it might equally well be a lover, husband, or something else. Even her nationality is uncertain; she speaks Spanish with an accent that emerges under stress. At any rate, the bookstore owner has become besotted with her, and the more he learns about the eclectic list of books she steals from himself and others, the more her mystery deepens.

Of course, I was reminded of Laurence Cossé's A Novel Bookstore, in which she also uses book titles as talismans. But her intent is to make a bridge with the book-loving reader; Rey Rosa is much more recherché. Here is a day's haul of Severina's:

La española inglesa
Flight from a Dark Equator
The Way of All Flesh
Carnets d'Afrique
Le poisson-scorpion

I had to look all but one of these up: Spain, Ecuador, England, Africa, and Ceylon are the settings, Cervantes, Norman Lewis, Samuel Butler, Pierre Lepidi (I think), and Nicolas Bouvier the authors. Wide-ranging, for sure, and there are tantalizing hints of a political message; the Norman Lewis book, for instance, is about the covert US role in Latin American revolutions. One can certainly see a connection with Roberto Bolaño, who often conveyed sinister messages through the books which his characters read or discuss. But while Rey Rosa's novella does indeed get darker, it comes nowhere near Bolaño territory. I think the explanation is probably simpler: Severina's elderly companion, who eventually introduces himself as Señor Blanco (white, like a blank page), describes himself as living entirely through, for, and by books. The life of books, the life of ideas, the page as a global meeting-place for both inspiration and danger: in our chain-store age, it is touching to think that such a thing is possible. Bolaño would have thought so; so would Italo Calvino; and Borges absolutely. Indeed, it is a Borges text in a Borges book that brings this charmingly edgy fantasy to its conclusion. [3.5 stars]

[Jfmarhuenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una historia de amor por los libros de seres libres, y una historia de amor de un hombre por una mujer. En algunos momentos me ha resultado muy bueno.

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ayer leí esta novela porque me produjo curiosidad la historia que gira en torno a un núcleo que son los libros, hay libros por todas partes, libros robados, regalados, pagados, prestados, libros escritos al margen del mismo libro, libros que se leen en voz alta, libros como el cuento de Bowles, escrito de modo que se puede leer de atrás para adelante. Es el encuentro entre un librero y una ladrona de libros (pero no la ladrona de libros al estilo de la novela de Markus Zusak, que me pareció extraordinaria). Es una novela breve, que se lee en una tarde, transcurre creo que en Guatemala, de a ratos es un delirio amoroso, con dos grandes pasiones, el amor y los libros, de a ratos una crónica negra. Me atrapó porque me identifiqué por esta pasión por los libros que me hacen trasnochar y a veces obsesionarme hasta conseguir el libro que estoy buscando. Pero la historia no terminó de gustarme, está plagada de incertidumbres, no llegan a definirse los personajes, continué leyendo creyendo que encontraría respuesta a las incógnitas y no aparecen. He leído muy buenas críticas de este autor, que hábilmente mantiene el misterio y escribe con una calidad inmejorable pero no he quedado satisfecha.