Drama

Written by Clare Vanderpool, Navigating Early is a touching novel whose narrative is built by parallels and allegories. Its frequent mixing of fantasy and reality, however, doesn’t quite land, relying heavily on bizarre coincidences to work. The story takes place in 1945, following a trip two boys undertake through a forest in Maine. Jackie, the protagonist, is a 13-year-old boy …

A tiger never changes its stripes. This is the great problem of flat characters: they do not change, they do not evolve, which may end up giving little purpose to their journeys. They are usually either stereotyped or mnemonic characters, being defined by their one or two notable traits even after the end of their stories. The great sin of …

If it is said a reader lives a thousand lives before they die, how about an author? Telling the life story of Julian Carax, a mysterious writer, and that of Daniel Sempere, the eleven-year-old boy who picks, from the labyrinthine shelves of a forgotten library, exactly the last book written by Carax, The Shadow of the Wind is a novel …