- Paperback: 203 pages
- Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 1st Dalkey Archive Ed edition (1 July 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1564782905
- ISBN-13: 978-1564782908
- Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 16.4 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,982,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"The writing is contemporary, urban, staccato, elliptical yet precise. Angelo has a flair for describing the ambiguities inherent in the human condition and at times suggests the melancholic intelligence that characterizes Cortazar." - Publishers Weekly; "Like Cortazar's Hopscotch... [it] offers a feast of literary rewards." - Quill & Quire
Product Description
In the early morning of March 31, 1970 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the annual birthday celebration of a prominent and wealthy young artist is taking place; and a train docked in Plaza Station filled with starving, drought-stricken migrant workers seeking relief gets turned away by the authorities, sparking a riot. From these seemingly unrelated events, Ivan Angelo's remarkable debut novel connects and implicates the lives of a complex of characters spanning three decades of tumultuous social and political history in twentieth-century Brazil. But with the central event - the celebration - missing, the reader is thrust into the middle of an intricate puzzle, left to construct the story from the evidence that accrues in a range of comic, unnverving, misleading and tragic episodes.
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Customer Reviews
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Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a story written in1976 by a Brazilian author, which depicts events based on a central incident in 1970 in Belo Horizonte, the southeast side of Brazil in the Minas Gerais region. The city receives a train of famine starved families escaping from the Bahia area; the authorities are unhappy and hold them at the station; the people are potentially rallied to riot by a guy called de Mattos, and a fire is started. Coincidently the security forces are aware of a group of individuals, that they see as potentially involved or as scapegoats, celebrating a party including a news reporter (Samuel), artists (inc Roberto - who's party it is, aged 29), girl friend and fellow reporter (Andrea), Jorge a lawyer is called to aid Carlos; Carlos is a married student who gets embroiled in the riot and is arrested. There are parallel characters called Ataide married to Cremilda, Marilia and Otavio. The basic story is not particularly engaging - there is little flowery or descriptive language (i.e. not magical realism), and it's certainly not graphically violent, sexy or emotional.
The structure of the book is very interesting: it has a prelude called `a short documentary' - this is a series of testimonies/news clippings spanning decades. There are then several chapters detailing characters and parallel circumstances including `Andrea', Corruption', `Class struggle' etc leading up to the riot. The book concludes with two extensive postscript chapters called `Prior to' and `After the' Celebration (sections referring to actual page numbers). The novel construction had every potential to be very entertaining however the mix is a bit of a dog's breakfast really and quite difficult to follow who's doing what, why and when (there appear to be several people/incidents unrelated to the main narrative). It is only really the last chapter that solves the mysteries; and because you already have a relatively thin grasp of the characters, any revelations (worthy though they may be) go over your head somewhat. This is the sort of book that needs a second reading; and flicking back through it, I do get the impression that it will be a good book for some.
The structure of the book is very interesting: it has a prelude called `a short documentary' - this is a series of testimonies/news clippings spanning decades. There are then several chapters detailing characters and parallel circumstances including `Andrea', Corruption', `Class struggle' etc leading up to the riot. The book concludes with two extensive postscript chapters called `Prior to' and `After the' Celebration (sections referring to actual page numbers). The novel construction had every potential to be very entertaining however the mix is a bit of a dog's breakfast really and quite difficult to follow who's doing what, why and when (there appear to be several people/incidents unrelated to the main narrative). It is only really the last chapter that solves the mysteries; and because you already have a relatively thin grasp of the characters, any revelations (worthy though they may be) go over your head somewhat. This is the sort of book that needs a second reading; and flicking back through it, I do get the impression that it will be a good book for some.
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