“The Weight of All Things” by Sandra Benitez (El Salvador)

Synopsis

The Weight of All Things is a novel about war – and the lunacy of it – seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy. The battleground is El Salvador. The hero is Nicolas Veras. His story begins at the funeral of assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero. Along with thousands of others, Nicolas and his mother have crowded into the plaza of the capital’s cathedral to pay homage. When gunfire erupts, pandemonium ensues. With bullets flying in all directions, his mother throws herself atop Nicolas to protect him and is killed. When medics arrive to take her body away, the boy believes she is only wounded. In the melee of the moment, he loses sight of her.

The attempt to find his mother begins an odyssey that leads from one peril to another. Nicolas searches through a merciless no-man’s-land menaced by guerillas on the left and the army on the right. It is a search that ends in still another massacre, and a heroic gesture by the boy who comes to understand, as grown-ups seemingly cannot, that guns and violence are not the answer; that, in war, there are no winners, and that the ultimate losers are the innocent caught in the middle.

Nicola’s Creative Reading Group reading list

Year 3 – “Americas (North, Central and South)” (Oct 2008 – Jun 2009)

“Larry’s Party” by Carol Shields (Canada)
“American Desert” by Percival Everett (U.S.)
“Swift as Desire” by Laura Esquivel (Mexico)
“The Weight of All Things” by Sandra Benitez (El Salvador)
“In Evil Hour” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
“Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon” by Jorge Amado (Brazil)
“The Time of the Hero” by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
“Inés of My Soul” by Isabel Allende (Chile)
“The Invention of Morel” by Adolfo Bioy Casares (Argentina)