El nombre del viento

I want to thank Carmen Reyes Luna, former student of mine, who gave me this book. Thank you for introducing me to this world and thank you for your good work. As the title of this entry might suggest I read this book in Spanish. It is a translation from the English, its original title is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It was a good experience to read again in Spanish. I had not done it in a few years now.
       It seems natural of literature, to me, to talk about characters that have innate extraordinary abilities. Like being able to learn new things in just a few hours and excel at them from the very first time they did it. That is the case of this book. Its protagonist, Kvothe, can do anything. He is meant to be a prodigious child who knows more than all his classmates at university (a kind of magical university) and does things better than anyone else without putting much, if any, effort. Perhaps at another stage of my life I would have accepted this setting. However, I have adopted a less flexible perspective on this matter. I believe that success is always the result of good effort, not of an innate talent. It is because if this strong belief that I had a hard time accepting the narrative. In fact, I am not sure I accepted it.
       That was not the only issue I had with the book. In my opinion, Kvothe is an arrogant, violent, and impolite person. I do not think Kvothe realizes this because he often talks about how educated he believes he is and also talks about formality and good manners. I just disagree. There was an episode during which he openly threatened a lady, Denna, of knocking her unconscious if she refused to do as he said. But in a later episode when he learns that a potential patron of Denna had struck her to save her life, he suddenly is of the opinion that a man who harbours even the thought of punching a lady is foul, evil, and unworthy of her. These are not the only occasions when I thought Kvothe's behaviour was unacceptable. Furthermore, it seems to me that the novel also wants to foster the stereotype of resentment against the upper class by repeatedly arguing that people that are not poor must be untalented, and that poor people know better because it is only them who have seen truly harsh things in life. Again, I just disagree.
       The story is told as memoirs that are being dictated to a person who is interested in recording them. There are some breaks in their telling that bring us to the present day. Present day Kvothe seems to be a more amiable and humble person. These breaks gave me a relief from being in constant disapproval of his past behaviour and opinions.