The sense of an ending is novel by Julian Barnes. This book have two parts. In part one the autor write about a group of friends. Adrian, Alex, Colin and Tony. They thought that the political and social system were corrupted and Adrian’s arrival into the group disloged Alex from his position. After they finished school promising lifelong friendship, they went their separate ways. Adrian won a schoolarship to Cambridge, Tony read history at Bristol, Collin went to Sussex and Alex go into his father’s business.

Tony had a girlfriend that was called Veronica and they liked poetry and rock music. Jack was Veronica’s brother a sporting young man and Tony felt insecure with Veronica’s family.

One day Tony’s mother gave him a letter from Alex which said: Adrian died. He killed herself. That’s the point of the story.

A year on, Colin and Alex suggested a reunion. And they talked and rememebered Adrian, his friend. Tony left home and started to work as a trainee in arts administration. He met Margaret, they married and three years later Suzie was born. Few years later they divorced and Tony had a few affairs but nothing serious. After all, Tony succesfully put Veronica out of his mind.
In the second part of the book we are back to the current time; One fact, two documents that Veronica’s mother leaves to Tony, will make him remember everything that happened at that moment. And it will take us to the surprising end, with the bitterness of real memory, which will bring another person, what happened and what was not aware at the time.

Rubèn Rodríguez.

BOOK’S REVIEW

“The importance of being earnest” is defined in the own book, I don’t know if by the own autor, Oscar Wilde, as a trivial comedy for serious people. Really, it is a funny play of theater that explains the story of two men that are fall in Love with two women and all the things and lies that they did and said to engage with them. The particularity of the story is that the two women want that their promises call Ernest and the autor plays with the sound of the name and the title of the book to do a critic of the importance of being earnest (sounds like “Ernest”) in the work of these men to get his goal to get married. On the other side, the play is also a critic to the wealthy social class and their habits in the final of nineteenth century in Britain.

The play is structured in three acts. The first one, locates the Reader in the situation of the two main characters, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrief and his suitors, Gwendolen Fairfax, the daughter of Algernon’s aunt, called Augusta or Lady Bracknell, and Cecily Cardew, the ward of Jack, who is intented by Algernon.

Moreover, there are some secundary characters who play diferents roles in the play: Miss Prism, the governess that tutores Cecily and a local vicar, Chausuble, who is fall in Love with her; Lane and Merriman, the servents of Algernon and Jack, respectively.

Basically, the first act runs in Algernon’s flat and prepares the Reader to know, in the second act at the Jack’s Manor House in the country, where lives Cecily, the development of the plans that both men had thought up to get married with the two women. In the third act, at the same place, the story ends well, getting engaged all the couples and discovering the truth name of Jack and which was his real family.

I have enjoyed a lot reading this book and I recommend it to everybody.

Jordi Pallàs Ariño

TITLE & AUTOR: Wonder, R.J. Palacio

BRIEF SUMMARY: August or for friends Auggie is an almost normal ten-year-old boy who likes ice cream, riding his bike, is a fan of Star Wars, and loves to play with his console. August lives with his family: his father, his mother, his sister Olivia (Via) and his dog Daisy on the Uper West Side of New York. Our protagonist was born with a hereditary disease of unpronounceable name and as a consequence his face is deformed, that is why from that moment August has to go many times to the doctor and undergo many operations, in order to have a normal life.

Despite the numerous surgeries, August’s face remains deformed and people continue to look at it in the same way; horrified and scared. After all these years, August is already used to being the topic of conversation but also to the glances and gossip of the people. This situation for August is a routine and tries to make these comments affect him as little as possible.

Due to his deformity he can’t attend school so his mother is in charge  of his education, but there comes a time when his mother doesn’t have the necessary knowledge to help him with his studies and believes that it is best for him to go to school. This idea at first doesn’t excite him, like his father, but in the end he agrees to see the director of the school, Mr. Traseronian, who will introduce him to several children who will show him the facilities. But one of them isn’t as kind to him as he should be and in the successive days of the course he will make August’s life impossible. So much of the story revolves around the comings and goings of August at school. If he makes friends,  how the children treat him, how the parents react to the fact that he is there.

The everyday life of August at school is going to be complicated; we all know how bad children of that age can become. And August for being like he is will be the center of attention. Little by little, August is making his space at school, making friends, and feeling as he has always wanted to feel, like a normal child. But to get there, he has to go through very difficult situations for him. Thanks to the school August will learn a lesson that is not taught in the classes; that is to accept himself as he is, smile the grey days and know that in the end you will always find a helping hand.

OPINION: The book shows a story of overcoming and tolerance. First I didn’t like the book but as I was reading I liked it more because it is a book that makes you reflect on things you never thought before; you put yourself in the harsh situation of the father, mother, sister and friends, but especially August. I was also impressed because the writer was inspired by a girl who has a deformation and imagined her story. This book, for me transmits that we are as we can be  in some way, especially if you have people around you who value you as you are, that your physical appearance is not important, it does not matter what race you are. People who love you only value the most important things, which are your feelings and emotions.

WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT?:
I would recommend this book to people aged between 15-17 years old and I believe that  everyone could read it without age differences because it is a real story.

A. CASTELLS

BROOKLYN

Author: Colm Tóibín

The protagonist of the book is a girl named Eilis Lacey, who lives in a town in southern Ireland, Enniscorthy, with her mother, who is a widow, and her older sister, since her brothers have gone in search of work .

Eilis is a clever girl, with accounting studies but she does not find work in her village, she only works in a grocery store on Sundays in the morning.

One day they receive the visit of a priest friend of the family, Father Flood, who tells them that he comes from New York and there probably he would find work for Eilis in New York.

Her mother and  Rose think that it is good for Eilis to go to New York, a few days later Eilis bought the ship’s ticket to New York.

The trip is very long and hard. In New York she meets Father Flood who helps her to find a job and a sleeping-house in the Brooklyn neighborhood. Eilis works in a department stores as a shop assistant  and lives in Ms. Madge Kehoe house with other girls.

She decides to go to accounting classes at night so that she will be able to find a better job, she gets a lots of letters from her mother and her sister and she feels increasingly homeless at her house, but gradually she gets accustomed to the daily life of Brooklyn.

Sometimes she sees Father Flood whom she helps with the meals that he organizes for the poor. She also begins to go to the neighborhood dance on Friday night with the girls in the guest house.

On a Friday afternoon, she meets Tony, an Italian-American boy, who is a plumber, he also has to work to help his parents and brothers. Eilis and Tony fall in love, Tony introduces Eilis to his parents, everything seems to go well, but one day Eilis arrives home and finds Flood who brings bad news, he tells her that her sister Rose had died while he slept because of the heart. Now she had to return to Ireland next to her mother.

Eilis tells Tony that she will return to Brooklyn but Tony is afraid that this does not happen and he proposes that they get married so she will return, she accepts and they get married in secret before leaving to Ireland.

At home with her mother everything is sad, she does not tell anyone that she is married. Eilis easily gets accostumed to his old life in the village, she  begins to walk and go to the beach with his old friends. Like this, she begins a new friendship with Jim and increasingly thinks less about Tony.

I really like Brooklyn, it teaches us how difficult it is to emigrate and start a new life alone, far from the family and usually with little money.

I would recommend it a lot, I could not stop reading it, as it makes you think about what Eilis can finally decide.

Montse Bosch

4th English

August is a special boy but not a boy with special needs as he says. He is ten years old and he has a particularity on his face that does not allow to be like the other boys. He was born with a facial deformity, a bizarre illness named genetic disorder characterized by craniofacial malformations.

He lives like a normal boy, playing in the playgrounds, watching Star Wars films, enjoying with his dog and all those stuff that  children  usually do. However, due to this illness, he has been studying at home, overprotected by his parents. But this year, he will start to go at school like the other children.

In the beginning, he feels out of place, although he starts to meet new friends, some of them more sincere and honest than other ones. But all of them  are finding out about the good and sweet August’s bottom, a simple child that just wants to be normal and that with his naturalness and his good sense of humor even joking about himself, he is winning little by little to all his school companions.

In my opinion, it is a very good book. It is a book that makes you think about some important things in your life like friendship, tenderness, sincerity, optimism and effort.

I would absolutely  recommend it.

Abigail Jené Teixidó – 4th Anglès