Play Book Tag discussion

Evidently I am in the minority in that I did not like this book. A bit of that could be the English translation--perhaps some of the magic of the original Spanish has been lost, although I can certainly tell that Benedetti had a strong writing ability. But it's more. I did not care for the protagonist, and if I don't like the fictional person who is telling the story (this novel is written as a diary, so the protagonist is the man writing it), I am not likely to enjoy it.

It's not just me who doesn't like Martin Santome which I saw as I scrolled through some of the reviews--at least one other person thought he was a misogynist.

One of the off-putting things about the central character, and while one could argue that this character is a man of his generation it makes absolutely no difference to me at all, is that he is very sexist--worse, leaning toward mysogyny (at least one review I read after reading this book calls him a mysogynist, but I am not sure if I'd go quite that far) and also the distance between him and his three adult children who all still live at home. I read it on an old-school kindle so can't readily get the quotes. Another is that he seemed rather shallow. I kept at this book because it fits a few reading challenges and I can't remember if I have read any other Uruguayan authors, so this may be a first for me.

I am not going to go into long detail about other things I disliked about this book--I rounded it up to 2 stars because I didn't hate every single thing about it, but at times it wavered.

That said, if you are interested in a book about a 49 year old man going through a bit of a mid-life crisis in some ways or if you enjoy Benedetti's writing, by all means read this. The two GR friends I have who have read and rated this book both gave it 4 stars and both live in Italy. Their tastes may differ and it could be that the Italian translation is better than the English one is.