LA Colmena

Rating:
Summary: A book full of destinies
Review: an interesting book about people and their efforts to survive in Madrid during the second world war. The heart of the story is Dona Rosa's cafe, where all different kinds of people meet, laugh, argue, cry and generally having a hard time. It is interesting to read about all the different destinies in this difficult world, but the problem was that there were too many people, I lost track after a while. An advice to other readers is to write down the names of all characters and a short personal description. After a while, you will realize that they all are connected in one way or another.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: Those who try to write the names of the characters down or even try to center the novel in any particular place completely miss the point of this novel. This is a novel about a community, a wolrd, where names and places are irrelevant. The only relevant thing is the city, Madrid, and the struggle of the people we read about in this novel. A wonderful masterpiece, a fast-paced cinema-like novel that beautifully portrays the suffering during the years of Franco's regime

Rating:
Summary: La Biblia de la posguerra
Review: With his characteristic ironic humor Mr. Cela centers "La Colmena" in the most dramatic period of Spain's 20th century history: the postwar. The characters are exquisitely molded into poor wretches, intransigent manipulators, neurotic business owners, garrulous salesmen, diffident bourgeois and aloof poets. The synergy is powerful because of its contrasts: each a survivor of the war and condemned to lead an egregious life. However, Cela's main theme is not just survival or improvisation, but imagination. The cafe dwellers are mostly penniless intellectuals hoping to trade a labored sonnet for a cup of coffee; or forlorn creatures longing for lost (and never-known) ones. An admiral of modern Spanish literature, Cela is a nobel prize laureate.