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El Arte De Volar (2009)

by Antonio Altarriba(Favorite Author)

4.29 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Graphic Novels & Comics

publisher

Ediciones de Ponent

review 1: A really sad and powerful story about a young man, born and raised in the country, who hates it and wants to go to the city in Spain in the early 1930s. There, he will be a driver, then be forcibly enlisted in the Phalange army, will defect, join the Republican army with the anarchists then the communists, then will become a refugee in France, be interned in a refugee camp, will escape, be captured, will escape again before being deported to Germany, be captured again, be sent to the labor volunteers in rural France, will become a partisan with the French Resistance, then a trafficking accomplice in the postwar France and, finally, come back to Spain in order to try to lead a normal life under the Franco regime. This desire for a normal life, for love and to be loved, afte... morer a life of adventures, will be his doom, since it will force him to compromise his ideals of equality and fraternity. And these compromises will transform him, reduce him slowly to a shadow of his former self. It is a sad, sad graphic novel, heartbreaking and very engaging on what it means to live under a dictatorship. It also tells a lot about contemporary Spain, which refused to look back at its horrid past. The characters are both attaching and despicable for their cowardice and weaknesses -- which make them all the more human. The ending is really poignant and shows us how the suicide of this man, which opens the book, is the result of 40 years of compromising, of living with the defeat in his heart. The author's postface is, one last time, really heartbreaking and we empathize with him, with his telling of his father's story. For all of these qualities, this novel is on par with such classics as "To the Heart of the Storm." I really recommend it and thanks the friends who offered it to me.
review 2: There are some authors who believe that writing is just remembering in different clothes. They talk about their memories, probably because those memories are painful or they were painful many years ago, and they claim that their memories should be appealing for the rest of the universe. 'El arte de volar' is one of those books, one of those personal memories that became a story for the rest of the universe.If it is not obvious, I have to admit my hatred for memories books. Or, more accurately, for memories books disguised as a fiction, maybe for avoiding the 'biographies shelf' in the bookshops. However, when the book is arriving to contemporary times, moving away for those stories about Spanish Civil War and post-War Spanish society, this graphic novel grows in interest, and in energy. So the illustrations do: the dreams of the main character are extraordinary, both in the conception and in the graphic performance. And the struggle of an old man in the elderly home is truly an appealing story for the rest of universe. If you can survive the first half of the book, the second half is utterly great. less

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