No one writes to the colonel - post I

To kick-off, and this might be a single shot rather than a long-lasting campaign, my lunchtime reading posts I have chosen a slim volume that should be digestible over a couple of lunch breaks

I have chosen No One Writes tor the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is the perfect read for a grey wet October day because that is exactly the weather when the book starts

The first half of the story

* The book starts with you being introduced to the Colonel and his wife on a misty, cold and damp October morning that is interrupted by the ringing of church bells because of a funeral

“For nearly sixty years – since the end of the last civil war – the colonel had done nothing else but wait. October was one of the few things which arrived.” Pg1

* His wife is asthmatic, they have a son who has died who has died and they seem to live a pretty quiet and miserable life, judged on the first few pages

* You discover that they are living against a backdrop of tension with the authorities and that their son, who owned the fighting rooster the colonel looks after, was shot distributing clandestine literature

* The colonel and his wife have no money and he is waiting, as he has been for 15 years, for a letter regarding his pension hence the title of the book

More tomorrow….