Word: gironella
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...Spanish revolution, which flamed around him when he was a child. At this distance, memory is small help, and the tales of heroes and sufferers take on the shadowy cast of legend. Set against the tough honesty of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, or José Maria Gironella's The Cypresses Believe in God, this novel has the air of a routine reconstruction. Yet it deserves to be read as a reminder of old passions and issues that are far from dead...
...Cypresses Believe in God, by José Maria Gironella, was the first part of an attempt, in the grand manner, to tell the story of tortured Spain from 1931 to the present. Using a single town as a testing ground, Gironella, a former Franco soldier, succeeded remarkably well in explaining how the civil war came about, without deserting his avowed objectivity...
...book makes its points with slashing impact in scenes as sharply etched as the sun-baked houses under the savage Spanish sun. English Author Lewis is as carefully dispassionate as Spain's José Maria Gironella in The Cypresses Believe in God, which massively documented the forces that carried Spain toward civil war (TIME, April 18). Lewis shows that in their hearts both sides have become tired of the stubbornly continuing conflict. The revolutionary has begun to suspect the motives of the revolution, the chief of police is sick of police power. In the end, Author Lewis seems...
...Cypresses Believe in God, by José Maria Gironella. A vastly ambitious novel which examines, through the eyes of key characters in the Catalonian town of Gerona, the complex play of social forces leading up to the Spanish civil war (TIME, April...
...novel's last hundred pages have the dreadful fascination of a bloody documentary as the Communists and anarchists take over and install a reign of terror. Unfortunately, Author Gironella is an uninspired writer who counts heavily on repetition and wearisome detail. Yet even as it stands, Cypresses may easily become a must for those who want to know how the Spanish civil war came about...