The penguin lessons is one of the stories that open a breach in my heart.
Actually, this book is one of my favorite of all times, and this is remarkable if you think that I got it only to complete a 2×1 offer in a supermarket.
I don’t even remember the other book, probably one I didn’t care a lot.
Reading the cover, you’ll learn that this is a true story and an autobiography.
So, If you start with this assumption, after half the book, you can guess they are kidding you. But please have the courage to read this and you will not regret.
This book talks about the astonishing friendship between an Englishman who lives in Argentina and Juan Salvador, the penguin who changed his life.
Tom is a teacher in an English school in Buenos Aires and, on holiday in Uruguay, he finds Juan mired in an oil puddle where all the other animals are dead.
Somehow Juan captures the attention of the guy who decides to bring the penguin with him with the idea to put him back into the sea the day after.
But we know that life is not always easy to plan and the penguin starts a relationship with the man that decided to bring him in Argentina in a journey that can be defined epic.
In a blink, Juan Salvador is the mascotte of the school, he will leave his print into the life of the students, above all of the shy Diego ones, who will break his shell thanks to the penguin.
But after all the most important fact about this friendship is the evolution of the point of view that Tom has about mankind and the world.
As I told before, on the title page is wrote “A true story”.
Well, I smiled when I read for the first time but then I can say that is a kind of likely story even because is seasoned with reflections of the author about the impact of the man on the environment and a lot of funny moments…
I’d like to share an extract that I personally liked.
«I had little doubt that what I was witnessing on this beach was the inevitable consequence of a hideous collision of cultures. When the instinctive, annual compulsion of seabirds to migrate met a vast, floating oil slick dumped at sea through human thoughtlessness and greed, there was only one possible outcome: The utter and complete annihilation of those penguins. This would have been indescribably ghastly had it been the result of an accident. That it should be the result of deliberate actions taken in the full knowledge of a likely consequences defied any kind of rationalism or acceptance»
Trust me. The penguin lessons is surely the next book you want to read
-ldmarchesi
I am in need of writing this post because since I read the book a couple of days ago, I am drowning in this tide . . .
The three-body problem is a Chinese sci-fi masterpiece that I suggest everybody who loves the genre to read, have a different point of view on many things.