Don't believe the covers and don't mess with fireflies!
It wasn't enough for me to watch the anime Grave of the Fireflies, which shed a lot of tears, so I stepped on the same rake again and fell for the cute design and cozy title of the book, Firefly Lights. I associate these insects with something warm and bright, but for some reason the authors like to dip the fireflies in deep sadness.
Paul Pen is a bestselling Spanish author whose four novels have been translated to many languages. The Light of the Fireflies was his first book to be translated to English, becoming an international bestseller. This book was followed by Desert Flowers and Under the Water, with which he reaffirmed his unmistakable brand of literary suspense and ability to create a deeply immersive reading experience for the mind, heart and nerves. Now, his debut novel of almost ten years ago, The Warning, is being published in English for the first time, finally offering readers around the globe the chance to read a story already adapted to the big screen in 2018. Motion pictures of The Light of the Fireflies and Desert Flowers are also in development, the latter scripted by Pen himself. In his capacity as scriptwriter, Pen is working on a forthcoming Netflix series while he writes his next novel.
The cover reads, "Those who love Stephen King-inspired novels, full of suspense and fear of confined spaces, will find what they are looking for." Fear of confined spaces? Seriously? Sounds like the least scary thing in this book to me!
So, we have a family in front of us: grandma, dad, mom, sister, brother and little brother - our main character. Please love and cherish them as such, because you won't find names in the book.
This family is unusual, but trying hard to look happy. They live in a basement, equipped with everything they need to live. The faces of the adults are disfigured by the fire-the mother's nostrils whistle and her eye closes with a smile, the father's face is covered with scars, and the grandmother is blind. The brother, in addition to external afflictions and a split lip, has very strange behavior - he laughs inappropriately, sometimes goes into a trance, sometimes marches. The sister is forced to wear a white mask so that she does not embarrass the rest of the family with her ugliness, because, according to her father, she has no nose. The main character, on the other hand, is not disfigured because he was born already in the basement.
At the beginning of the narrative, our boy is a very young boy who is told by his father that there is no place better than the basement, and he can always leave through the door, which is unlocked, but then he will never see his family again. The boy touches the handle, but doesn't want to leave.
A leap of six years. The sister gives birth in the basement. Most interestingly, who do you think the baby is from? There's not much choice. And to me, it's disgusting. The relationship between the sister and the rest of the family is strained, the child she can not love, and does not try, and then tries to poison.
Day follows day after day, but as the boy grows up, he gradually has to uncover more and more secrets. He realizes that the door through which he can supposedly leave at any time leads nowhere, he learns the real reason why his sister wears a mask, on top of everything else she tells him about how children are made, with all the consequences concerning his nephew. Who can you trust when everyone around you is lying? The main character's best friends are fireflies, little glowing bugs, his only connection to the upper world. He collects them in a jar and communicates with them using Morse code. For the first time in his life, he wants out...
The abstract promises us a dramatic story, but I didn't think it was to that extent. The book is just under three hundred pages long, but by the hundredth I was getting a little nauseous and wanted to cry. In fact, I kept looking for answers to numerous questions. Why did the family end up in the basement? Had they voluntarily locked themselves in there, or were they being held there by force? Who was supplying them with everything they needed? I thought that when the book told the story of this family, all the puzzles would fall into place and I could justify its members. But it only gets worse from there. Everything I've described is flowery compared to the truth to be learned.
If you have a lot of extra nerve cells or like to suffer, this novel is for you. I don't know why an adequate person would read this. I just can't find a reason. Incest, disgusting insanity passed off as love, endless lies to each other. I feel depressed after this book, though inwardly I am glad this torment is over. I want to put the book away and forget about it. It is the best reminder that appearances are deceiving.
This article was sponsored by Mohammed Aljomaely
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