Mini - Comments

Another set of mini-comments... sometimes I really don't have much of an opinion or much to say, and it feels that if I were to write lengthier posts, they would be pretty much like those old school days of writing essay-like exams, where one had to explain a lot from one sentence! Sometimes I'd simply write and write, and sometimes not everything would make sense anyway...

What these two books have in common is that both were short, and I picked them to fit topics in a challenge. 

Dona Pura e os Camaradas de Abril by Germano Almeida is a fictional story which the author wrote from the prompt of the publisher, and several authors participated. This way, there is a small collection published in 1999, and all stories had to include the 25th of April of 1974, the day of our revolution, which ended dictatorship in my country. This author is from Cape Verde, which was a Portuguese colony at the time. 

The story is narrated in first person by the main character, a man who was young in 1974 and came from Cape Verde to Lisbon and stayed at the house of Dona Pura, also a woman from Cape Verde. 

I must say I felt a little confused about what was happening because the narrator jumps from the present to the past without any kind of graphic change. The story is also a continuous text, with only three chapter like divisions in the 226 pages, more or less, making this a very tiring experience, and one where I was easily distracted by other things. I've read the book, I know the setting and the fact the author uses a lot of elements from both countries to develop the plot, but to be honest, I can't summarize the plot that well...

Grade: 4/10

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Waiting for the Flood by Alexis Hall was a better story. In 2016 I've read another book by the author set in the same world and it was a wonderful story to me. I've read another by the author in the meantime, from a  different series, but that one wasn't as appealing. Perhaps this did affect my willingness to read more, but despite having had this novella in the same world of the first I liked to read for years, only now did I try it.

Edwin Tully is living alone in a house he used to share with his boyfriend and although they broke up tears ago, he still likes to live there. However, the house is located in an area which might become flooded and it seems there is prediction this might happen sooner than later. People from the Environment Agency are in the neighborhood, helping those who need with sand bags ans such and when Edwin meets Adam Dacre, they can't seem to take off their eyes of each other. As they keep meeting and exchanging some conversation, it becomes obvious they might be able to hit it off... I liked this novella, and that means nothing major happens, this is a story about a chance meeting with a HFN. The writing is superb here, and both protagonists very appealing.
Grade: 8/10