The Fountains of Silence

      Madrid, Spain in the 1950's. The streets of Madrid were full of secrets as the country was being run by a dictator, Francisco Franco. The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys explores the story of an aspiring American photographer, Daniel Matheson and his family during their visit to Madrid at this time. The Matheson's found themselves in Madrid due to an oil deal that was going to be made by Daniel's father. This meant that their time in Spain would be short, only a few short months during the summer of 1957. These few months would give Daniel plenty of time to take pictures to capture what life was really like in the streets of Madrid under General Franco's ruling. Only, he realized that in a short amount of time of being there that things have already started to go wrong. He starts to see how much people's freedoms have been taken away from them and the emotional exhaustion that has come with that. Daniel has also made the mistake of falling in love with a hotel worker, Ana. Throughout his trip he learns the strength of family, the power of love, and the importance of secrets in Madrid. The Fountains of Silence is a historical fiction book that captures the truth of what happened under General Franco's dictatorship after the Spanish civil war. I rate this book 4/5 stars because not only the historical aspect of it was really interesting, but the rest of the plot was, as well. 

      The Fountains of Silence jumps right into the story at the beginning of the book. You got to know the characters' day to day life right away without any formal introductions. After getting to initially know them, then you get to know them personally. As you keep reading, you learn about their secrets, relationships, families, and their general stories. While doing this the author uses multiple different plot elements to help create the story. One that is used a lot is imagery. Throughout The Fountains of Silence I feel like I could always imagine the setting and the characters because of how descriptive the author - Ruta Sepetys - was. The use of imagery helped move the book along because it gives you such a good picture in your mind while you're reading that you kind of forget that you're reading. Another thing that helped move the book along was the changes in point of view. The Fountains of Silence was written from multiple characters point of views, such as, Daniel, Ana, Puri, and a few others. Each of the characters have their own individual story, but in the end they all come together. As the story continues, so does each of theirs, and by the end you learn that each of them have their own unique purpose that contributes to the main plot. When the conflict is more directly talked about, such as during the middle and end of the book, you see the importance of all of the characters. The conflict is something that was slowly being led up to. Even with the rest of the book preparing us for it, the ending still was not completely expected and had a bit of a shock factor when certain things happened. The end of The Fountains of Silence is one of those moments where everything comes together and makes sense. Overall, Ruta Sepetys did a really good job with the technical parts of crafting this book. The story structure and use of rhetorical devices caused the book to progress very naturally and flow together nicely. 

     As previously mentioned, The Fountains of Silence had a really nice flow to it. This is thanks to the story structure, various plot elements, and the writing in general. Having a natural flow in a book makes it easy and enjoyable to read. That being said, I really enjoyed reading The Fountains of Silence. It was written in a way that was fast paced without rushing through the actual story. Even though the story was progressing quickly, the time was still taken to make a lot of small details in the book, such as using as many descriptions as Ruta Sepetys did. The descriptions of not only the characters, but the setting made it easier to keep reading The Fountains of Silence. Creating a good visual image in your head while reading will always help the actual reading go a lot quicker and will, once again, make you want to keep reading a majority of the time. Another aspect of The Fountain of Silence that made it move so quickly was the short chapters. Each of the chapters was kept really short and they always alternated who was speaking each chapter, so you were never reading the same persons point of view for fifty pages straight. I really liked this part for most of the book because it made sure that it was not getting boring at any part. The only part that I did not like the point of view changes was the beginning. At the beginning of The Fountains of Silence the characters were never really introduced, so you just learned who they were as you read. The point of view changes made it difficult to get to know all of the characters at that time because they were all just stories that were getting combined into one person in my mind. After the initial part of the story this wasn't an issue anymore and it even turned into one of my favorite parts of the book. Another part of the writing that I did like was how there were excerpts from various sources placed within the book. This helped split up the chapters and even and even gave some context at points. I also liked that The Fountains of Silence was split into parts depending on the year of when it was happening. By splitting it up into these different parts also gave some context and helped make what was going on in the story make more sense. Overall, the writing of The Fountains of Silence was really good. 

     I rated The Fountains of Silence 4/5 stars because I really liked it. The only reason that one star got taken off was because the beginning was hard to follow and it was a little hard to get in to. Other than that one thing, I don't really have any other complaints or things that I didn't like about the book. I thought that this book was really interesting even though I did not know all of the historical context behind it. Even without prior background to the history of the book it was still really good and made complete sense. The story itself flowed really well and it wasn't completely predictable which is also why I liked The Fountains of Silence. No part of the story was boring and it was set up in a way that keeps you wanting to read more. All in all, I would recommend The Fountains of Silence to anyone who likes historical fiction. I really enjoyed reading this and historical fiction normally isn't my favorite so I'm confident that most people would like The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys.