The Book of Emotions is an interesting book about an aging photographer looking back at his life and relationships. Cadu is compiling a book of the same name that is a compilation of some of his most famous photographs. In his old age his has gone blind and so he requires the assistance of a young assistant to find the photographs that he wants to include, an assistant that he has a growing attraction to.
The book is divided into divided into separate sections. There are sections from his personal journal where the present takes place. He discusses his progress of the book and his feelings for his assistant. There are also descriptions of each photograph. His ability to take photographs has been robbed him but his memory of the ones that he has already taken are, literally, picture perfect. Because we are given detailed descriptions of the photos without seeing them, you in effect experience the blindness that Cadu does.
For Cadu, his photographs represent bookmarks in his life. Each one that he includes come with rich context. In his younger days he worked for a politician which gave him steady work but restricted his free spirit considerably. He also had torrid affairs with many women. It wasn't that he couldn't be satisfied, it was that he had great love for many beautiful women.
I didn't end up finishing the book, if that's any indicator of how it is. I would like to go back and re read sometime soon. If you would like to read this, I would recommend keeping a short list of characters that are introduced and their relation to the other characters. There wasn't an inordinate amount of characters so I don't know why I had keeping track of them. I don't know if it was the unfamiliar names or what.
If this is something you'd like to read, you can pick it up at your local bookstore or online here.
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