The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Luis Sepulveda

A book to savour, to linger over. Sepulveda is very economical with words and he uses them sparingly and to great effect. An old man who loves both stories and nature and what happens to him - it's a simple read but goes deep. I felt bereft at the end of this book.

Extract

He read slowly, spelling out each syllable and murmuring them quietly as if with great relish, and when he'd mastered the whole word he would repeat it in one breath. Then he'd do the same with the whole sentence, and in this way he gradually appropriated the feelings and ideas that imbued each page. When he found a passage he particularly liked, he would repeat it as many times as he thought necessary to discover how beautiful human language could be.

Parallels