The silence of the books is a work with a poetic discursive narrative, which makes us reflect on the importance of books and how reading is essential for our critical sense and for the formation of questions, among other things. I must say that this reading was extremely satisfying for me, at first, I had some difficulty connecting with the narrative due to the vocabulary that the author uses, a little more far-fetched than what I'm used to, but as soon as I got used to it and the narrative flowed as it should.
The book is divided into parts, in the first, we are inserted in a not-so-distant or perhaps very distant future (depends on your point of view), in which books are prohibited. Reading, buying, collecting or any act involving such delicate and charming pages is a crime.
In this first part, we meet Alice, a girl who at the height of her eight years dreams of a distant time, a time when books were allowed, secretly, she keeps a copy that once belonged to her late grandmother, however he doesn't it lasts a long time, when his mother discovers him, she immediately tries to get rid of him.
Alice is a girl without the affection and affection of her parents, and therefore, in need of attention. When a man occupies the house next door to hers and she discovers his fondness for books and stories, she finally believes she has found her point of peace.
The narrative of the second part goes back a few years and we are introduced to Hilário Pena. A Brazilian, convicted, trying to prove his innocence or maybe trying to understand who he really is.
Life in prison isolated him from many events that drastically changed the course of society, with the least contact he had with outside society, he found out when the ban on books and printed matter began, but for him, it made no difference, he didn't understand because books were so overrated. Hilário's maturation was a high point in the story, the construction and deconstruction of old concepts showed us more than just the change and evolution of a character, it was possible to capture the essence of what the author wanted to show.
The third part of the book is on account of the insertion of Hilário/Santiago in Alice's family, and the surprising outcome of the plot made my mouth open and my heart racing.
The silence of the books was a pleasant surprise for me, and it is the type of reading that with each rereading there is more intrinsic in front of the paragraphs, a reference here and another there makes the reading thought-provoking and pioneering.
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