Marvin Menjívar, Autor - Blog

"Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best-- well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word." A novel about the pains of growing up and the strength of the little decisions that build up a future that could become inoxerable if allowed to. An almost perfect work that could have declared a stronger statement if the ending had not been so predictable and conservative. PLOT Alice Love (Ok, I disliked the last name) wakes up at the gym, she is confused not because she has fainted but because she is in a gym! She has never been a fan of these places. She is surrounded by a bunch of people that she does not recognize in a life that does not appear to be her own. Quickly, it's revealed why she is

PRESENT PERFECT: It is used to speak about events that finished or were accomplished in the past but whose consequences are still relevant in the present. already, yet, always, just, ever, never, so far, today, this week/month etc, how long, lately, recently, still (in negatives), etc. PAST PERFECT: It is used to speak about events that happened before another action in the past. before, after, already, just, for, since, till/ until, when, by the time, never, etc. FUTURE PERFECT: We use it to speak about a future event that will happen before another future event. by the end of this year, by the year 2040, in five years, ten years from now

"It was miserable, wet-bone March and I was lying in bed thinking about killing myself, a hobby of mine. Indulgent afternoon daydreaming: A shotgun, my mouth, a bang and my head jerking once, twice, blood on the wall." A slow and effective burn, Dark Places was the second novel I read from Flynn. It is not my favorite but that does not mean it's not good. It may not be as shocking as Gone Girl or as twisted as Sharp Objects , however, its structure and final act are worth of attention and praise. PLOT Libby Day recounts her everyday life, struggling to keep going. She is the survivor of an infamous massacre perpetrated by her brother, Ben Day, where her family was violently murdered. She barely escaped alive and the tragedy still haunts her, and she believes that this excuses her to become a parasite of society. We quickly realize that even though a victim in essence, she is no innocent woman and has been spoiled by pity and conmiseration. She wants people to

PAST PERFECT: It is used to speak about events that happened before another action in the past. before, after, already, just, for, since, till/ until, when, by the time, never, etc. PRESENT PERFECT: It is used to speak about events that finished or were accomplished in the past but whose consequences are still relevant in the present. already, yet, always, just, ever, never, so far, today, this week/month etc, how long, lately, recently, still (in negatives), etc. FUTURE PERFECT: We use it to speak about a future event that will happen before another future event. by the end of this year, by the year 2040, in five years, ten years from now.

Si les gustan las novelas que los mantienen intrigado hasta la última página, les sugiero leer mi novela Una Novia Solitaria. Es una corta novela de suspenso acerca de la desaparición de un esposo el día de la boda. Es un relato austero y conciso sobre secretos y relaciones tóxicas. *** Yvonne de Winter es una novia en el altar ansiosa por decir «acepto» en la boda que espera resuelva muchos conflictos de su relación; pero, además de las campanadas de la iglesia, también escuchará las sirenas de patrullas policiales. Todo se complica por la ausencia del novio y muchas preguntas surgen a causa de su desaparición. Naomi Kessler es la encargada de descubrir la verdad entre secretos incómodos y esqueletos de una relación tóxica. Disponible en Amazon en tapa blanda: https://amzn.to/2yIv9mc Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/2OrhZk6 Google Play Books: https://goo.gl/fUU4Ry Google Books: https://bit.ly/2NbGTjs Puedes dejar tu reseña en Goodreads: https://bit.ly/2L7ar5s

SIMPLE PAST: To speak about events that started and finished in the past, it is also used to speak about habits in the past. ago, yesterday, then, when, ... days/ hours/ minutes ago, last night/ week/ month/ year/ Sunday, June etc, in 1999, etc. SIMPLE PRESENT: We use it to talk about routines, and scientific facts. Also to speak about things that happen in the present, but that are not happening at the exact moment of speaking. usually, often, always, every day/ week/ month/ year etc, in the morning/ afternoon/ evening, at night/ the weekend, on Fridays/ Mondays, etc. FUTURE FORMS The auxiliary will is used to speak about events that might happen in the future, but that we are not certain about. Most of the time, we speak about long-term events. Also, we use it to make promises, threatens, and to take decisions at the moment. We make predictions based on what we imagine, think or believe. Going to is used to speak about events that are arranged to happen, th

"It had been twelve years since a police officer last asked me a direct question, but my first instinct was still to lie." Gripping, manipulative and shocking, The Wife is an amazing psychological thriller + legal drama that doesn't let go and keeps you wondering from beginning to end on what is true and what is a lie. Once you have all the answers, you will be left speechless. PLOT The name of the book reminded me of the TV Series The Good Wife , and as I began reading the first pages, I could actually mark some similarities. Legal drama, check. Husband facing scandal, check. Devoted wife, check. Wife having to deal with her personal life + husband's scandal, check. Apparently submissive wife willing to believe her husband and support him through everything, check, check, check. The novel begins with a flashforward, with statements that later resonate in our minds not as a gong but as a gunshot, In an instant, I became the woman they assumed I’d been a

Yvonne de Winter no quiere revisar el reloj porque no es la hora lo que quiere ver, sino a su prometido, Stuart Campbell. El tiempo no ha pasado tan rápido como ella cree, descubre la hora, son las dos y cuarenta y ocho de la tarde. El único consuelo que le queda es que ni siquiera sus padres han llegado y la ceremonia debía de haber comenzado a las dos treinta. Sin embargo, no siente ningún alivio, tampoco los invitados, quienes demuestran su descontento de diversas formas. Algunos hombres han salido a fumar, a hacer llamadas telefónicas de negocios o caminan de un lado a otro, desesperados. Las mujeres han ido al baño a retocarse el maquillaje o, simplemente, se quedan en las bancas de la iglesia, descansando y discutiendo sobre algunos temas interesantes. Todos saben lo mal que Yvonne debe sentirse, y la terrible idea de una novia abandonada aparece en la mente de los presentes. También en la de Yvonne, quien lucha contra el deseo de llorar, pero lo primordial es sacar ese negati

"But the old wound has split open, the invisible blood pours forth. Soon I'll be emptied." An ambitious novel with two different stories that are not truly independent as one is misled to believe. The Blind Assassin is proof of Margaret Atwood's talent. It's a book about family and the life of a woman that has been marked by the decisions of those around her and obligations, responsibilities, burdens... PLOT Margaret Atwood loves creating novels with complex structures that include flashbacks and flashforwards that explain why characters act the way they do. The Blind Assassin is no exception. The Blind Assassin appears to host two independent novels. The first is about Iris Griffen Chase's life story, and another one where The Blind Assassin  tale is narrated. TBA is supposed to be a book that Iris' sister, Laura Chase, wrote before killing herself by driving her car off a bridge. The first novel narrates Iris' life through her own po

"So this is how it happens, a part of her thought as she rocked and begged. This is what it feels like. You don’t change. There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don’t become someone else. You’re still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same." As usual, Lianne Moriarty is able to create a mystery out of the most common of events. That's a good thing unless the resolution is not as shocking as one expected to believe. Probably my expectations were too high. When I read the novel's description in Wikipedia I was intrigued. After the couple is invited by Clementine's old friend Erika to a neighbor's barbecue party, a spiral of intrigue, lust, and betrayal is unleashed.  I found no lust, no betrayal, almost nothing that was promised, maybe intrigue but until the second half of the n

"The truth is that very few understand the truth about forgiveness. It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble. If they were only less weak and careless, and more foresightful, and if they would keep from blundering into difficulties, think of all the sorrow in the world that would be spared" I had never read historical fiction in my life. I must admit I was a bit intimidated by the concept, by its possible complexity. Alias Grace was my first intake at this sub-genre, and it was not a disappointment. It's a glorious analysis of a complex character and mystery that will forever remain unsolved but that has inspired a talented author such as Margaret Atwood to write such a compelling tale of survival. PLOT Simon Jordan, psychologist, shows up at the penitentiary to interview Grace Marks, a maid that was formerly accused of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper

"Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a

" I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat.  And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked.

"Ahora ya no peleo por coraje... ya entiendo más las razones para pelear... Hasta me duele cuando mato a un soldadito... Pues sí, son campesinos pobres como yo" Una novela narrada desde la perspectiva de una mujer luchadora al lado de la guerrilla durante la guerra civil de El Salvador nos muestra una visión del conflicto armado en nuestro país, una cicatriz que se mantiene a pesar del paso de los años. El autor demuestra que el hecho de tener como protagonista a un integrante de la guerrilla, no es determinante para mostrar una visión subjetiva o sesgada. TRAMA Zenaida es el alias que utiliza la protagonista de la novela, una joven que solía estudiar medicina en la Universidad de El Salvador, que vivía con su madre que vendía en el mercado, que tenía un noviazgo placentero con Sabino Loucel. Todo se ha acabado con el recrudecimiento del conflicto armado en El Salvador, solo quedan los recuerdos de un pasado feliz. En el presente, Zenaida es una combatiente del lado

"This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either" PLOT The novel follows the lives of three women with lives that are apparently unrelated to one another (beside the fact that they live in the same country, Australia). Cecilia Fitzpatrick is a succesful and perfectionist woman with a perfect marriage. She is married to John Paul and has three daughters. She wishes for something shocking to happen, and it definitely does happen. One day, she finds a letter that her husband wrote in the event of his death. She struggles on whether to read the letter or not. Tess O'Leary discovers her cousin, Felicity, is having an affair with her husband. While she decides what to do, she decides to go to her mother's house to take care of her and reflect on whether to di

"Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur." Mystery, suspense and  a lot of drama can be perceived on the surface of Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride. Interpretting this novel is a slippery matter. From afar, the book is a work of art; if you look closely to the story, you will find a group of women that have suffered in the hands of another woman: Zenia. But even that

"You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, nonphysical realm. But it’s only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery." Stone Mattress is another triumph from master storyteller Margaret Atwood, author of the critically acclaimed novels The Robber Bride, Cat's Eye and The Blind Assassin . She demostrates that she is not only able to create complex universes and compelling stories with a complex structure, but she is capable of synthetising a story still providing a gripping literary experience. PLOT Stone Mattress is a collection of nine short stories. I was fascinated by every tale which contains Margaret's usual sharpness and mastery of language. T

"Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized" Most novels that talk about childhood describe this phase as one full of joy, happiness and games. Cat's Eye is a brilliant exception. It's a refreshing vision of a somber childhood full of bitterness that determines a future. This novel makes us reflect on the phrase The past is in the past . It's not. The past always leaves a mark, a scar; it shapes us. PLOT After years of absence, Elaine Risley, brilliant painter, comes back to her hometown, Toronto. She's in town to present some of her paintings, her first exhibit to the public. Elaine is anxious, not for the importance of the show, but for the phantoms of the past that harass her. Through flashbacks, we get to know Elaine in her childhood. She's the daughter of an enthomologist and a housewife, she has a brother that is interested in science, Stephen. They live far from the city. Elaine

"La vida, el sufrimiento, la soledad, el abandono, la pobreza, son campos de batalla que tienen sus propios héroes; héroes obscuros, a veces más grandes que los héroes ilustres." TRAMA Un clásico de la literatura, Los Miserables, escrita por Víctor Hugo trata sobre la vida de tres personas en específico: Jean Valjean, Fantine y Cossette, todos son víctimas de un destino injusto, de los estereotipos de la sociedad, del abuso de poder, de la corrupción, de la miseria. Jean Valjean es rechazado por su etiqueta de ex-presidiario, Fantine es marginada por su situación de madre soltera y Cossette es abusada por su condición de huérfana. La novela empieza con Jean Valjean buscando refugio de forma infructuosa, un cura lo ayuda y Valjean le paga mal robando sus cubiertos valiosos. El cura no lo entrega a las manos estrujadoras de la justicia sino que lo absolve de su pecado, pidiéndole que haga el bien, con lo que el cura sabe que ha sido robado. Jean Valjean es transformado p