y no se lo trago la tierra...

hmmm....my initial impression of this book...well i thought it was a little odd that it was a childrens novel. although i do understand that the child is the narrator however i found it hard to follow in terms of who and what was being talked about. I dont know if this happened to only me but i found in hard (at the same time interesting) that we don't know the narrato's name or those of his family. come to think of it...we rarely in the book hear about names. (only a few). that's why i found it a little complicated at times in terms of who they were talking about and to whom things were occuring. At the end of the book we see a lot of cursing which suprised me, as i heard that this was meant for children.

I also didn't quite get the rythym of the book. Like, sometimes it would talk about one event, then another, that had nothing to do with eachother. Other times he would start talking about something and then go back in time. There was a flow...but it was a weird one. Not the usual chronological order that we're all used too i guess..

Anyways, on the the contents of the book. I really enjoyed the little short stories that would be talked about. Although there was no major climax or action in the book, i thought it did a very good job in describing (from a child's point of view) the realities of working campesinos.. I noticed that it touched on religion a lot (from the devil, to the church, to cursing god) which was interesting to see because of the different situations the boy was in and how he viewed religion.

I feel that maybe it was fragmented stories because it was symbolic of their fragmented lives in a way. The fact that they always had to travel and weren't in one place for a long period of time is exaclty why the stories were short and there wasn't actually any response to any of them. they just happened. there was no follow up.

I think there's a lot more to this story that im still trying to piece together and im excited to here other people's opinions on it!!