The High Mountains of Portugal

Product Information

Goodreads: One of the most intriguing things in The High Mountains of Portugal is the habit of Tomás, and later other characters, to walk backward following the deaths of loved ones. For while The High Mountains of Portugal is an exuberantly narrative novel, it is even more so a contemplative, philosophical one. Peter's friendship here is based on the same mix of fear, awe and need that Pi felt towards his Royal Bengal tiger, and Odo's profound Otherness sustains him on the turbulent high seas of bereavement, loneliness and old age: "Does it bother him that the ape is essentially unknowable? I read each one over several times, hoping to glean something from it, before sighing and dutifully pressing on.

The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel - AbeBooks The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel - AbeBooks

The themes of religion, of grief and of animals connect the story to those that precede and follow it. They’re escapes from indulgences, narrow misses with non sequiturs, rescues from repetition, and so on.Both of these sections are extremely readable, with strongly developed characters whose intriguing stories make it frustrating when they are truncated.

High Mountains of Portugal (Martel) - LitLovers High Mountains of Portugal (Martel) - LitLovers

Second, he attempts to reconcile his grief by seeking out a religious artifact that requires him to travel to the High Mountains of Portugal. Love is a house with many rooms, this room to feed the love, this one to entertain it, this one to clean it, this one to dress it, this one to allow it to rest, and each of these rooms can also just as well be the room for laughing or the room for listening or the room for telling one’s secrets or the room for sulking or the room for apologizing or the room for intimate togetherness, and, of course, there are the rooms for the new members of the household. At first, very emotional and overwhelmed by what he is about to do, Tomas is concerned about his driving skills and ability to maintain the vehicle. It's odd from the beginning with a story of a man who walks backwards as the result of his grief over losing his lover, his child and his father. This is a list of the mountains in Portugal, including the mountains with more than 1400 meters of elevation and with, at least, 100 meters of topographic prominence.One of the peripheral pleasures of this book, and this section in particular, is the way it demonstrates that Martel can handle symbolic material far more effectively than in his 2010 novel, " Beatrice and Virgil.

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel, book review The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel, book review

In "The High Mountains of Portugal," he has recalibrated the fragile balance of his tones and provided a far more evocative exploration of our ability to persist — and even thrive — in a world of sorrow. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Fifteen years after The Life of Pi, Yann Martel is taking us on another long journey.A technician wearing virtual reality glasses checks his installation in three British public telephone booths, set up outside the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. So a man who habitually walks backwards can continue to hold a job as assistant curator in the National Museum of Ancient Art. But there, in a laboratory filled with screaming apes, he connects with a most-surprising new friend. Peter Tovy because Peter was a disciple of Jesus, and Tovy is a Jewish Portuguese name, as is Lozora.