The spies by Luis Fernando Verissimo

The Spies by Luis Fernando Vermissimo

Brazilian fiction

Translator Margaret Jull Costa

Original Os Espiões

source – review copy

Well finally I m getting round to my advent Christmas books from Brazil rather late ,we were off work last week and I decided to take a back seat from blogging reading and books as I decide to spend time with Amanda and my family as they had come to see us both.

Anyway back to the book this is another gem from Machlehose I remember his earlier book called Borges and the eternal Orangutans ,a book which caught my eye just by its title so this one , intrigued me So Luis Fernando Verissimo who is he ,well he is probably one of the best known writers in his homeland of Brazil ,his father was a well-known writer ,he started in papers as a copy editor then work up too being a columnist ,well-known for his satire and being a critic of certain right wingers in Brazil ,he has published   seven novel and tens of collections of short stories .

“Our past the living room in the old house with the candle burning on the floor the corner of the ruined garden where he said that if the moon smiled she would resemble me and I cried “are you calling me “moon-faced” ?! and he kissed me me on the mouth for the first time “only with her heart closed could she exact just revenge for what they had done to her father too “

the note sent too our narrator

The spies as I said is comic noir set in Vermissimo native Brazil ,we meet our narrator he works in a publishing house and receives a mysterious letter from a women called Ariadne from a small town called frondosa ,this town far away from the narrator is in the middle or wild part of Brazil ,she has sent him some writing but he reads finds out she is after revenge and she is going kill her self as her brother and father have been killed by the local gangsters a pair of brothers that live in a foot ball mad town .So our narrator ,decides to leave behind his drunk evenings in the bar discussing the rights and wrongs of books to find out more about this town and the women that sent this too him .Eventually drawing in his drink buddies to spy and thus become the spies .what do they find out ? well read the book ?

The latest news from Frondosa was our man inside had met Franco Martelli .He had been shown round the factory by him and invited to lunch at his house .into the monsters lair !

the man they choose to try to spy reports back

This book is full of humour witty bits on books and writing and middle age men trying to be spies and not always doing it well ,the fact our main character is a hapless chap ,and he is stuck in a rut when Adriadne and the town of Frondosa appears in his and his friends lives is the spark for this adventure  .It has echoes of classic noir the mysterious women ,who may or may not been under the thumb of the bad guy or is she all she seems ,remind me of the classics of Noir cinema ,but then you have our narrator and his friends that come across as characters from an Ealing comedy the great ensemble bits like the lavender hill mob or the ladykillers .so if you fancy a book like the Maltese falcon  done by Ealing films with a few bottles of rum and a jazz album on in the background.There is also maybe a feeling of Greek myths our narrator as a hero Adriadne  on the way to kill and kill her self over her father’s death sounds like it appeals  this is the book for you .As ever Jull Costa translation seems spot on.

Memories of Brazil for me ,well never being to Brazil but  one of the themes in this book is football and I remember the first brazilian I saw that  really made an impact on English football that was Juninho Paulista as he is known but we knew him just as Juninho when he was playing for Middlesbrough so I found a clip video on youtube he was small and quick ,with a big smile it always seemed .

Fear of De Sade by Bernardo Carvalho

Bernardo Carvalho is a Brazilian writer and Journalist he has spent time in france and America as a correspondent for a brazilian paper ,fear of de Sade  is his sixth Novel .He has also translated books from English into Brazilian Portuguese by the likes of Oliver Sacks and Bruce Chatwin .

The fear of de Sade is a novel in two act the first is told in dialogue between an unnamed voice and the Baron of LaChafoi a forty-year old that is a bit of a libertine ,he had before been taken to prison had an orgy with three other people and spanish fly in the mix it becomes a scandal  ,he is being asked to remember this by the voice and thus solve what happened and how that some one  had died as a result of the orgy ,all this is set during the terror period of the french revolution .Over time the Baron feels the voice maybe the man he admires De Sade the infamous French noble man   and a man much admired by the baron .

VOICE : And what proves it wasn’t you ? that you’re not lying ? The fact that you don’t remember doesn’t mean much .Who can tell if you’re not really mad, and committed the crime in a fit ?

BARON :Master,I swear it !

Voice: don’t call me master !

BARON: I beg of you .My defence depends on you helping me .

the baron and the voice (de Sade?) talk

This first part does remind me of Kafka ,whether I d call it Kafkaesque I m not sure it is easy to put that title to piece that seem to not show the full picture and people on the edge or caught in the judicial system ,and I often see it mention and it is even ,mentioned on the back of the book ,But I feel this maybe owes something more to Beckett two unknown voices other than the baron’s  name and the act he has supposed to have committed we are told nothing else .I m remind of the plays of  Beckett detached voices ,people meeting in odd circumstances .

The second part of the book is about a couple,following a game that was devised by the Baron on his following of De Sade ,where the partners taken in turn to create fear in the other as the feeling is that when love dies all that can remain is fear its self  ,so we see the acts by each partner crank-up one by one ,but they act as thou this is normal  and thus this leads to the partners getting more radical with there ideas and thus leading to the husband taking a radical final step to put the fear in his wife .Again like the first part of the book this has no names the couple are just referred to as husband and wife .

In one of his books ,a moralising novel in dialogue form ,the baron recounted how he had avenged himself on the wife who was betraying him : he deflowered the illegitimate daughter she’d had by his cousin .Because according to the Baron’s philosophy ,only treachery liberates .Treachery is repaid with treachery .

The couple discover the Barons words .

This book is a gem an unusual and refreshing style of book inventive and an interesting insight into the human psyche .How far people will go in pursuit of an idea .

Have you a favourite Brazilian Novel ?

 

more than just a hatrick ,this brazilian shows flair with a pen

TITLE  -  A CHAPTER OF HATS AND OTHER STORIES BY MACHADO DE ASSIS .

SOURCE – LIBRARY

Machado Assis is considered the godfather of south american fiction been born in 1839 he was born in to a poor family and eventually rising to become a civil servant and respect writer in his own lifetime the first writer to develop a unique style of writing with influences from the european writing of the time Maupassant ,Chekov .Now the stories are all based in and around Rio in the late 1800′s ,what seems an emerging city and vibrant characters appear from the pages ,the main title story is of a wife and her attempts to get her husband to change his hat ,in other stories there are students drink rats blood ,a love triangle sailors on shore leave .

the choice of hat is not an indifferent act ,as you might suppose ;its is governed by a metaphysical principle .don’t imagine that a person buying a hat is committing a free,voluntary act;the truth id there obeying an obscure determinism .the illusion of freedom is rooted in the purchaser .

a brief description of buy a hat

Now I want to love this book when I ordered it from the library ,in parts I did but in other places I found his prose hard to connect with ,I have at time struggled with other prose of the era by other writers .But the stories I did connect with shone through and Machado humour and laconic wit shone through ,he is a bit like a brazilian Saki at times with the stories poking and highlighting the middle classes and the foibles ,in this exotic capital as it was finding it feet in the world ,It was a great introduction to a writer who I will try again Kinna at Kinna reads suggest I try one of his novels, so I will at some point ,the translation by John Gledson is neat and functional ,the book may suffer from a little stiffness at times whether that iz due to translation or the writing is hard to say .so a real up and down journey for me through this book but that is sometimes the case with short stories collection .

WINSTONS SCORE -

IS A SLOTH VERY BRAZILIAN AND LIKE THIS BOOK NEEDS TO BE READ SLOWLY AND ABSORBED LIKE A SLOTH IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO WORK THROUGH THIS COLLECTION .