{"id":63,"date":"2026-03-16T16:39:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/?p=63"},"modified":"2026-03-16T16:43:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T23:43:43","slug":"wrapping-things-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/2026\/03\/16\/wrapping-things-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrapping things up"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I still have about 90 pages left to read, I can tell that the book is starting to wrap up. I had a feeling that the famous author Juli\u00e1n Carax was not dead, and while this hasn’t actually been confirmed yet, we did find out that on the night that everyone thought Carax died, his best friend (Miquel Moliner) switched identities with him and died that night instead. We will find out shortly if Carax is still alive, or died in another way at a later point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have to say that I’m a little disappointed with the grand mystery of Juli\u00e1n Carax. I was expecting some bigger (and maybe more credible?) reason for why someone would want to kill him. Inspector Fumero is clearly evil, so the fact that he wanted to kill Carax just because Carax and Pen\u00e9lope were lovers (and Fumero loved her too, even though he never told anyone about this) could make sense but the fact that Jorge Aldaya (Pen\u00e9lope’s brother) wanted to kill Carax just because his father asked him years ago to do so? And that he blamed Carax for the reason why his family fell into poverty? It just seems too dramatic and unrealistic to me. Also that Nuria Monfort fell in love with Carax before she even met him? She loved him just because of stories she had heard about him? I don’t know about all of that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Having said all of that though, it is still a very engaging story. I was hooked from the beginning and have found it difficult to put down at every moment. I am still interested to find out if Carax is still alive and if Daniel (our main character and narrator) will get to meet him. What is the connection between Daniel and Carax? And what about what I read back on page 373, that Daniel would be dead in seven days? There are still some questions left unanswered so I hope they will be answered before the book ends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0You can feel the darkness of the Spanish Civil War, and the following dictatorship, throughout the book (especially in the second half of it). They do mention some things happening in the country but you can mostly feel it throughout the stories of the characters. It’s hard to read sometimes, especially because my family would have lived through some of it (they came to Canada in the 40s\/50s). It’s impossible not to think of them, wherever I read about this time period, however it always surprises me that it somehow helps me understand myself better. It seems that each time I gather information about my family (including who they were, what they lived through, etc), it’s like I gain another piece of my very own puzzle of identity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A question for the class: Off the top of your head, are there any books you’ve read that led you to a deep reflection about life, and therefore felt like it changed your life as a result of it? Please share the name of the title and why, if you can think of any! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I still have about 90 pages left to read, I can tell that the book is starting to wrap up. I had a feeling that the famous author Juli\u00e1n Carax was not dead, and while this hasn’t actually been confirmed yet, we did find out that on the night that everyone thought Carax died, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/66"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/aburke09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}