The Seville Communion

Wonderful book with believeable characters. The group of three hit men were just priceless. The translatio was excellent.Can't wait for the film to see if it's as good as the book.

I love the characters. Even the most sinister somehow still have an endearing quality. This book makes me want to discover Seville for myself.

Buena novela en español de llama "La piel de Tambor" para leer en inglés esta edición es agradable la letra es de buen tamaño, la historia te ofrece aquello que te da normalmentePérez Reverte, es decir buen suspence.

Libro en inglés, muy recomendable para practicar este idioma, su trama engancha desde el principio, lo que favorece su lectura en inglés.

Ten years after its initial English Language publication, I've finally read "The Seville Communion," and I apologize to Arturo Perez-Reverte for having ignored it all these years! It's one of his best and best-written stories. Kudos to Sonia Soto, translator, as her work is nearly perfect, much better than some later translated works of this author.Arturo Perez-Reverte is a master at setting the pace for a reader. At least in this tale, that is his great gift to us. Whether it is Father Quart's painfully measured reactions, whether it is the slow pace of faded aristocratic life in Seville, or whether it is the heartbreaking buildup of sexual tension between Macarena and Lorenzo Quart, the author lures you into the pace and timing of the moment, the scene or the emotion. You are with the characters at all times and with the pace Perez-Reverte sets for you.True to Perez-Reverte's long-standing theme, this book doesn't disappoint in its knock out body slam against the Catholic Church, especially his piercing (and decidedly correct) condemnation of its greedy, devious, self-centered and despicable hierarchy. This venerable religion, according to the author, finds its own salvation only in higher-minded smaller figures, who are the main characters in the book: one, Father Lorenzo Quart, who is a sort of CIA agent for the Vatican and is the story's central character, and the other, who is an aging, kind of beat-up cynical and grumpy former rural priest, Father Priamo Ferro, now the pastor of the broken-down, decaying Church of Our Lady of Tears in Seville.It's a very good mystery/detective story (not really a "thriller"), set in slow-to-slower Seville in the mid-1990s, but with a current twist that involves a hacker who has broken into the Vatican private files, warning the Pope about the need to save the decaying church.What I liked about this story were the 4 strong and very different women characters: one a down-and-out ex-cabaret singer, still mourning her long-lost love; the second, a 70-something doyenne, more-or-less the brains of the bunch and one of the few remaining "Spanish aristocrats;" third, Gris Marsala, an jeans-and-sweatshirt American ex-patriot nun overseeing the church renovation; and finally the ultimate love interest of Father Quart, Macarena, a 30-something dazzling beauty (and daughter of the old woman), who has an ulterior motive for almost everything. She is the story's second central character. As in "Queen of the South," whose most memorable characters are women, the women in "Seville" dwarf almost all other characters in the book, except for Father Quart, who is described as an almost unbelievably good-looking, sexy, smart 39 year-old stony-calm, ever-so-perfect-in-appearance-and-body-and-demeanor priest who does Rome's bidding perfectly - well almost. Quart is aptly characterized on Page 35, "...the Catholic Church from the start was to Quart what the army was to other young men: a place where rules provided most of the answers as long as one didn't question the basic concept."Many pages of the story are hilarious, especially in relating the antics, mistakes and incompetencies of the trio of "Banana Republic" idiot-bad-guys. These 3 people, and their handler, are cast right out of a Keystone Cops movie, but with a Panama hat and bulging white suit re-characterization. In fact, some of the characters are so enamored with old American film noir and "B" movies that they quote lines from the movies to each other. They appear to be right off a boat from Havana, say in 1925!As usual, there are many memorable lines. About Seville, page 228, "....the city retained, as no other city, the gentle hum of time slowly extinguishing itself..." Page 266, describing those from the lost aristocracy, "...the awareness of the dying world, the temptation to side with the parvenus in order to survive. The desperation of intelligence." Page 280, in a nostalgic look at a disappearing society, "Some worlds don't end with an earthquake or great crash....They expire quietly, with a discreet sigh."In some of his more recent works, Perez-Reverte fails to provide a suitable ending for his stories, such as in his very disappointing "Painter of Battles." Here, however, earlier in his writing career, the book's ending is really quite good, and the last 75 pages read quickly and satisfyingly. At the beginning of Chapter XIV, Page 347, Perez-Reverte quotes Vladimir Nabokov, "There are people - among whom I would include myself - who detest happy endings." How true, how true, Arturo, we know you include yourself among them also, and like it or not, we follow along behind you.