jesshindes's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I read this book because it was translated into English by a friend from my creative writing MA. I'm glad that he did it both because (a) that's pretty cool and (b) I probably wouldn't have run into Victor Heringer otherwise. Heringer was a Brazilian writer who sadly died very young fairly recently, so this is a new(ish) novel by an author who is already dead.
It's a funny book that must have been in some respects a real challenge to translate. It's set in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro - *not* the slums, a more midway sort of place where some people are relatively well off and others rather poor. In this respect, there were elements of this which reminded me of Our Share of Night, the Mariana Enriquez I read recently, which also had a whole section with a little gang of kids running around a South American city (although that one is set in Argentina). That was horror, though, and this is something a bit harder to pin down. The narrator Camilo is disabled and a bit of an outsider amongst his friends; the book tells the brief story of his first love, Cosme, a boy who is brought into the house by Camilo's father, a rather sinister doctor who has been tending victims of torture. Emotionally, I found the book a little challenging - it took me a while to read - I think partly because it's sad, because Camilo (who recounts the story from his adult perspective) is a lonely figure who is still mourning the lost relationship; but also it's quite a carefully self-contained book in some ways that sets up some mildly disquieting situations and just lets them sit (in the present-day sections Camilo sort of adopts a boy, the grandson of Cosme's murderer, but his intentions towards the child are ambiguous for a long time even to himself). For a lot of the book I wasn't sure exactly what Heringer was saying, but I think the book makes most sense to me as an exploration of isolation, loneliness, the difficulties of connection.
That was interesting to me partly because of how it sat with the novel's structure. The narrative is told in short sections that hop around chronologically between past and present, but there's more innovation than that and there was an interesting contrast for me between the narrative world of the book (which felt in some ways quite old-fashioned and analogue, pre-internet) and Heringer's use of various structural elements that felt to me very Online. For example: he starts the book with a 'weather report' (I really liked this) telling us that it is always hot (a precise temperature range) and windless; he uses a little recurring figure, almost an emoji, that represents the sun but also sometimes other visual images (the splatter of blood, for instance); he has a whole chapter about the children in Camilo's class which is essentially a 'tag yourself' meme that's 40 people long (later he will refer to other characters as 'a T de M' or whatever); and then there's another long section which has its origin in an appeal Heringer put out online, for people to send him their name and that of their own first love. So it was interesting to me to encounter a very internet-literate author, which Heringer seems to me to be, writing a story that didn't itself really have any sense of the internet within it, if that makes sense? I think partly that's more interesting because it's a story about a homophobic society and a narrator who feels quite isolated, and the internet is a potential source of community that the narrative doesn't offer him; and yet in some respects he has access to the same things that Heringer does (the list of names that result from that appeal are delivered to us in his voice, if that makes sense). So I guess that was another source of some of the ambiguity that made the book difficult for me: what this book was supposed to be, what the reality of the book was within its own world. Who are we, as the audience for Camilo's narrative? It's not quite clear and perhaps that made me uncomfortable! But it was a really interesting read and I particularly admire Heringer's commitment to innovative formal choices.
It's a funny book that must have been in some respects a real challenge to translate. It's set in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro - *not* the slums, a more midway sort of place where some people are relatively well off and others rather poor. In this respect, there were elements of this which reminded me of Our Share of Night, the Mariana Enriquez I read recently, which also had a whole section with a little gang of kids running around a South American city (although that one is set in Argentina). That was horror, though, and this is something a bit harder to pin down. The narrator Camilo is disabled and a bit of an outsider amongst his friends; the book tells the brief story of his first love, Cosme, a boy who is brought into the house by Camilo's father, a rather sinister doctor who has been tending victims of torture. Emotionally, I found the book a little challenging - it took me a while to read - I think partly because it's sad, because Camilo (who recounts the story from his adult perspective) is a lonely figure who is still mourning the lost relationship; but also it's quite a carefully self-contained book in some ways that sets up some mildly disquieting situations and just lets them sit (in the present-day sections Camilo sort of adopts a boy, the grandson of Cosme's murderer, but his intentions towards the child are ambiguous for a long time even to himself). For a lot of the book I wasn't sure exactly what Heringer was saying, but I think the book makes most sense to me as an exploration of isolation, loneliness, the difficulties of connection.
That was interesting to me partly because of how it sat with the novel's structure. The narrative is told in short sections that hop around chronologically between past and present, but there's more innovation than that and there was an interesting contrast for me between the narrative world of the book (which felt in some ways quite old-fashioned and analogue, pre-internet) and Heringer's use of various structural elements that felt to me very Online. For example: he starts the book with a 'weather report' (I really liked this) telling us that it is always hot (a precise temperature range) and windless; he uses a little recurring figure, almost an emoji, that represents the sun but also sometimes other visual images (the splatter of blood, for instance); he has a whole chapter about the children in Camilo's class which is essentially a 'tag yourself' meme that's 40 people long (later he will refer to other characters as 'a T de M' or whatever); and then there's another long section which has its origin in an appeal Heringer put out online, for people to send him their name and that of their own first love. So it was interesting to me to encounter a very internet-literate author, which Heringer seems to me to be, writing a story that didn't itself really have any sense of the internet within it, if that makes sense? I think partly that's more interesting because it's a story about a homophobic society and a narrator who feels quite isolated, and the internet is a potential source of community that the narrative doesn't offer him; and yet in some respects he has access to the same things that Heringer does (the list of names that result from that appeal are delivered to us in his voice, if that makes sense). So I guess that was another source of some of the ambiguity that made the book difficult for me: what this book was supposed to be, what the reality of the book was within its own world. Who are we, as the audience for Camilo's narrative? It's not quite clear and perhaps that made me uncomfortable! But it was a really interesting read and I particularly admire Heringer's commitment to innovative formal choices.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Rape, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Sexual content, Homophobia, and Ableism
More...