A review by mhall
The Tuner of Silences, by Mia Couto
3.0
3.5 I liked the poetic language and the dreamlike feel of this novel set in Mozambique and translated from Portuguese. It reminded me a lot of [b:My Abandonment|5603935|My Abandonment|Peter Rock|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348118650s/5603935.jpg|5775303] by Peter Rock, about a girl and her father living in Forest Park in Portland.
The Tuner of Silences is about a father who takes his sons to live in the middle of a national game reserve, where he tells them the rest of the world has died, they are the only people, and they are waiting for God to come and apologize to them. The first sentences of the book blew me away:
The images and words in this novel create a slow-paced story narrated by the eleven-year-old Mwanito. The story of a crazy tyrannical father whose strange rituals and fanatical beliefs shape his sons' lives and, in Mwanito's case, are all he knows of the world. Things are often inverted or reversed in the descriptions of this world. As his father lowers his older brother Ntunzi into a dry well, the rope in his hands is "the opposite of an umbilical cord."
The quasi-mystical language and weird lives depicted give mysterious weight to small things, like clothing thrown into and floating in a river, the moon. There was not much in this novel that evoked a particular setting for me - I could imagine the characters and story being taken out of the Mozambique setting and put into the desert of Utah, or perhaps set someplace nameless.
There were a few small things about the translation which bothered me: specifically, the overuse of 'my old man' for father and 'broad' for woman.
The Tuner of Silences is about a father who takes his sons to live in the middle of a national game reserve, where he tells them the rest of the world has died, they are the only people, and they are waiting for God to come and apologize to them. The first sentences of the book blew me away:
"I was eleven years old when I saw a woman for the first time, and I was seized by such sudden surprise that I burst into tears. I lived in a wasteland inhabited only by five men. My father had given the place a name. It was called, quite simply, Jezoosalem. It was the land where Jesus would uncrucify himself. And that was the end of the matter, full stop. My old man, Silvestre Vitalício, explained to us that the world had come to an end and we were the only survivors."
The images and words in this novel create a slow-paced story narrated by the eleven-year-old Mwanito. The story of a crazy tyrannical father whose strange rituals and fanatical beliefs shape his sons' lives and, in Mwanito's case, are all he knows of the world. Things are often inverted or reversed in the descriptions of this world. As his father lowers his older brother Ntunzi into a dry well, the rope in his hands is "the opposite of an umbilical cord."
The quasi-mystical language and weird lives depicted give mysterious weight to small things, like clothing thrown into and floating in a river, the moon. There was not much in this novel that evoked a particular setting for me - I could imagine the characters and story being taken out of the Mozambique setting and put into the desert of Utah, or perhaps set someplace nameless.
There were a few small things about the translation which bothered me: specifically, the overuse of 'my old man' for father and 'broad' for woman.