For the New Year: Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones

Falcones, Ildefonso. Cathedral of the Sea. Black Swan, 2009.

Have you figured out your New Year's Resolutions yet? Have you made a list? Do you have good intentions but a lack of energy? I have been thinking about resolutions for the past few weeks, and rather than the usual diet- and exercise-themed stuff, I think I've settled on a more general plan. I want to live more mindfully. This would cover the healthy lifestyle genre since there's always something more I can do in that department. Usually at this time of year I make noise about wanting to read more, but I already read more than most people I know. What I'd like to do in 2018 is to read more mindfully, too: take more time to select good books, savor them, look up unfamiliar vocabulary words and concepts, and understand the author's motivation for writing the book. It takes SO MUCH work to write a book that I feel I owe it to an author who has written something worthwhile and meaningful to get the most out of it. I'd also like to write more reviews of books on Amazon--those mean a lot to authors.

Speaking of books that are meaningful and worthwhile, I just finished a rather long novel which left me continuing to think about its characters and location. The book is Cathedral of the Sea and it was written by Ildefonso Falcones. In its original Spanish, it was a huge hit in Europe. The cathedral in question is Santa Maria del Mar in the Ribera neighborhood in Barcelona, which turned out to be the focal point of my two-week stay there this summer. I fell in love with that cathedral and wrote a lengthy essay about it and its main character and the barrio around it while it was being constructed and what it is like now. Our tour guide recommended this novel to us inside the cathedral, and I scribbled the title and an approximation of the author's name in my little notebook. I found an English translation in a nearby shop.

The main character of the novel is Arnau Estanyol. We meet his parents before he's born and learn about medieval customs and laws of the peasant folk and then the urban citizens when Arnau and his father move to Barcelona. Arnau is enamored of that cathedral, and it becomes a focal point for him, too, throughout his life. This cathedral, in the Ribera district, was built by and for the working class people, many of whom carried huge stones across the city on their backs from a quarry on a mountain called Montjuic.

A bastaixo depicted on the door of Santa Maria del Mar

These laborers were called bastaixos, and they also unloaded cargo from ships at Barcelona's port. Arnau spent some time as a bastaixo as a young man, and cultivated work ethic by emulating his favorite colleagues. Despite his best intentions, he finds himself with jealous enemies and challenging situations, and the novel stays compelling throughout its 751 pages. (No kidding.)

This is a book to savor and to read mindfully. There's plenty of medieval history in there, plus well-developed characters for whom the reader grows to care deeply. When I finished the book last week, I was sorry to have to leave that world created by Falcones. How often does that happen when one finishes a novel?

Here are some more of my photos of Arnau's cathedral to help you daydream about Barcelona...

The front doors with bastaixos above

Inside the cathedral

The Rose Window

Pews

Chapel