Summer Readings - A Painting, Colors and Horses

Three books I enjoyed reading this summer half. …(in German)

What Horses Are Those That Make Shadow On The Sea, Antonio Lobo Antunes - this is the story of a  landowners family that live in the Alentejo, Portugal. The mother is going to die, her husband has lost all the fortune - they gained from breeding bulls for the bullfighting - betting.  Five children also failed at life on  … This family has very much misfortune. A story that does not delight a reader.

Why read Lobo Antunes?, a Portugiese novelist writing a book almost each year - with a very dense style although some sentences seem endless and let everything happening all at once …?

I discovered Antunes, reading  The Inquisitors' Manual, and really enjoyed reading about 10 of his books. The Horses.. is not available in English yet.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Haruki Murakami - the story of a young man haunted by a great loss. In school Tsukuru focused on a group of best friends:  But, when he returned from college he was rejected by the others without any explanation. Later, a new girlfriend convinces him to seek his former friends and uncover the truth about the rejection. Where the color came in? All his friends have colors in their names .. not him (his name means "to make things").

Why I read all of Haruki Murakami, an internationally acclaimed Japanese writer? - he transports me into other worlds (by fiction or science fiction) and it's like if he just sat next to me telling me stories..

I discovered Murakami, reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I also enjoyed A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84 ....

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt - "Theo" recounts the story of his life thus far. 13 years old. he loses his mother when they visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) - she was killed by a terrorist bomb. Theo gets The Goldfinch a Dutch master painting. The painting is the novels heart.
First, Theo is taken by a rich family of a schoolfriend in NY then by his father to a sinister exurban development of Las Vegas …
Continuously the painting  draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, he moves more and more into dangerous circles …

Why I read The Goldfinch, of Donna Tartt the American writer taking years for writing a book? - because I really enjoyed reading The Secret History.
The Goldfinch also presents excellent writing but I divide the story plot and the corresponding character design into three sections: the first (NY) is a gripping read, the second (Las Vegas) also, but falls into some "white trash" stereotypes, reinforced in the third (Amsterdam) - more a wild crime story (with "Russian" mafia …).

I am only a reader, but I dare analyzing: Antunes uses complex language to write about simple human-made misfortune and oppression. Murakami takes a simple narrative style to describe complex behavior. Tartt seems to have virtually created a film first and then writes about it (in all details) - no wonder that it took ten years to write the Goldfinch.

I find Antunes' texts algebraic (characters "operate" on each other).  IMO, the Nobel prize for him is overdue.