[Review Preview] Vango - Between Earth and Sky I just finished reading a preview of the new book by Timothée de Fombelle, and I have submitted three days ago (also carry- Hence the schemino, even if you find it in the post below).
Title: Vango - Between Earth and Sky Author: Timothée de Fombelle Released: February 2011 Publisher: Edizioni San Paolo Collection: Fiction St. Paul Boys
Genre: Fiction, Adventure
Pages: 419 Price: /
Fourth Cover: Paris 1935. At the foot of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, forty men are lying on the ground waiting to be ordained priests. Among them is Vango, nineteen years, a past shrouded in mystery and a future as uncertain, because - just before the ceremony begins - the police made his entrance to the churchyard to arrest him.
But what crime he committed? Vango does not know it and escape by climbing up the facade and towers of the cathedral. The police, however, is not the only interested in the guy, there is also a young woman who eagerly follows the flight as a suspicious looking man who opens fire on him. Escaped arrest, the boy tries to get in touch with his mentor, Father Jean, and discovered to his being accused of the assassination of the priest. About
plot behind Vango, Vango and who is in reality? Growing up in the Aeolian Islands, where he had mysteriously landed in three years with his nurse,
Mademoiselle, who loved him like a son, protecting it from its own past can not know a lot even to him.
Around Vango rotate historical figures such as Hugo Eckener, the captain of the Graf Zeppelin, and other fancy like Zephyr, the head of the convent monaco Secret of Alicudi. Then there's Ethel, Scottish, rich, young and deeply in love with him. Finally there are the enemies, terrible, ruthless, one for all: Stalin! Just him, the Soviet dictator himself.
The previous post ended with this question: To me it seems really interesting, and you?
Now that I finished reading a preview all that interest aroused in the first instance, whether the plot is the early chapters, has vanished as the snow melts in the sun.
The question I asked myself when I read the last words of those 419 pages was: So what? But in the end, who the hell is the protagonist?
The author does not seem to be clear from the outset about who to point the camera, to use jargon in television / film, as every two to three changes from one point of view. The result: a big headache.
But first things first: everything seems to begin in front of Notre-Dame, Vango is forced to flee when the police (and I'm still wondering why on earth have decided to escape, rather than clarify everything or be good and listen to what I had to tell the cops ... Dunno, maybe it was written in the book and has escaped me) climbing the cathedral as a new Spider-Man to save his life. Later the main character will know to be charged with the murder of Father Jean, his spiritual guide in the workshop.
From the moment he discovers the murder, the author takes us back in time, when Vango child is stranded on an island in the Aeolian Islands with his nanny, Mademoiselle. This flashback takes 2:00 to 3:00 chapters and confuses the reader, if you were first involved in the story and wanted to know how it goes forward, she finds herself do not understand anything.
Then this is ricatapultati, Vango be able to get away? And who knows, because the reader finds himself on the shores of Lake Constance, Germany, more precisely in the hangar of the Zeppelin and Hugo Eckener now looks clear the swastika (remember that everything takes place in the years between 1934 and 1936) from the helm of the aircraft, including a historical digression on the zeppelin and another. Vango, you will find only at a later time, arrived to find his old friend and asks for help.
But you'd better stop me here with the plot, I'd hate to spoil the read for those interested.
Personally, However, I managed really badly the omniscient narrator, but not only here but throughout the book: it gives information that is absolutely unnecessary to the story, showing just how much the author has documented on certain facts which, frankly, could also be hidden the rest of the story. (It is true, we often complain that many authors today are not properly documenting when they write something, but I find that it is also a duty to complain when an author shows off the documentation, entirely outside the story he is writing . Ok, it's a children's book, but there are notes in the back of the book for something, right?)
The plot unfolds encountering various characters, but really existed and most of the time it focuses more on these than on the real protagonist, who, remember, should always have the spotlight focused on him, and many times is left to itself, again and have somewhere and somehow arrived at that point (a examples include Vango leave the seminar in Paris, then we find, after several chapters, in Germany to seek help from Hugo Eckener. How did you come from Paris to Lake Constance? Mystery).
Not to mention the whole chapters devoted to minor characters who are lost in history and, at first describes in great detail, especially in terms of their past, then literally disappear, swallowed up somewhere somehow and for some reason, or there are characters that pop out of nowhere, especially if it really existed, and then they know everything, even many years after the events successful period in which the story takes.
It seems strange that an author does not get lost in most emerging things like that or can no longer manage the plot devised by himself.
The basic idea of \u200b\u200bthe story is good, but there are too many characters that revolve around the protagonist and who want more space in the story (because that really seems to have its own life and that the author is a puppet in their hands, forced to write about what they want), but unfortunately have be relegated to secondary characters.
In my opinion, the character who more than anyone deserved the scene in its entirety is Zefiro . It is probably the richest character and on which the author should have from the beginning point, not making it virtually a shoulder Vango, relegated to tell their story in a chapter and leave aside for the whole book, finding almost at the end .
Generally I like the novels of this kind, but I found Vango involving only the beginning, then I started to utter confusion, in practice I was not the most, I did not know who the protagonist, who the enemy, too many names and no face to which to approach, because if the characters really existed we have pictures of those invented by the author do not have a name and some occasional description.
I regret not having found this book short of initial expectations that I had read the story, unfortunately, three stars are not enough (it deserves two, but I'd feel too guilty, because there is something good. .. hidden, but there is) for Vango and his adventures.
