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Blood-Drenched Beard (2012)

by Daniel Galera(Favorite Author)

4.15 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Hamish Hamilton

review 1: Per FTC guidelines, I received this book for an honest review; I wasn't paid. Blood Drenched Beard, from its blurb, had so much going for it. It sounded like a deep, magical realist tale about a man hoping to get away from his family's past, but finding it haunting him, no matter where he goes. Right up my alley. The execution of this, though, left much to be desired. I thought the location was great. I enjoyed getting to know the small seaside town and its inhabitants. I enjoyed the descriptions Galera offers us, which are rather lush and dense, but also beautiful. As a whole, I rather enjoyed Galera's writing. It was quite lovely at times, just okay at other times. There were other times when it was sometimes confusing, and while no quotation marks are a stylistic choice... more, I think they would have benefited the novel. Or Galera should just not have large chunks of writing in which multiple people spoke. At first, this was jarring. Eventually, I got to tell whose voice was whose, but even at the end there were some moments when I had to reread and ask myself who was speaking. Other things I liked: the mystery of the grandfather. I thought it was SUPER interesting. I thought that the discussion between what was fiction and what was reality was great; I enjoyed the ways in which the community that seemed so welcoming also had a darker side, a threatening side. It certainly had the elements of a magical realist kind of town, but didn't go quite that far. The people that we got to see within the community were, for the most part, pretty cool. Some weren't as developed as they could have been, but I liked getting to meet them. And I loved Beta. That dog has more determination than I'll ever have, and Galera put her through way too much. And, I can't say much about this, but the parallels between the main character and the grandfather were brilliantly executed. Once I went back and reread the first section in italics, I had to take a moment and just sit back, letting the weight of that arc settle in. That part Galera did WONDERFULLY. Well done.All of that said, there was a lot missing for me with this novel. I couldn't, for the life of me, connect with the main character. There were aspects of him I thought were interesting, such as his inability to remember faces. I liked the athletic side of him and how Galera portrayed that. But, I couldn't understand some of his decisions. He just seemed to go through and act without really thinking first. I couldn't really care about his relationships with either women in the novel. I cared more about what happened to his dog than I cared about what happened to him. And, a large chunk of this novel was spent with NOTHING happening. The main storyline got lost, only to eventually crawl its way back in. If Galera had spent the entire novel focusing more on the main character trying to find out what happened to his grandfather and experiencing the backlash of some community members, I may have liked this book more. As is, it's a solid three star book for me. Not terrible; not wonderful. There were moments of glory and moments that I could have done without.
review 2: Comienza bien, plantea una situación conflictiva, tiene un buen desarrollo pero en la mitad de la historia se pierde, se torna aburrido, con larguisimas descripciones al borde de lo insoportable, gira súbitamente a lo filosófico y existencial; realmente me hartó. Tiene diálogos interesantes, estimo que está bien escrito (no me siento en condiciones de decir que está bien escrito y que no), pero me cansó, me aburrió terriblemente; en mi opinión sin lugar a dudas le sobran más de 100 páginas. less

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