Antonio Torres' 1986 Brazilian novel is stylistically interesting, but despite the rave reviews it received, it never really reaches greatness. It comes across as style over substance. Torres' is among the generation of Brazilian authors whose voice was forged during the 1964-1985 military regime. Self-censorship, obliqueness, wry observation, and double-meanings were their stock in trade. The most interesting element in "Blues for a Lost Childhood" is the strange construction: a nameless self-pitying narrator in a drunken stupor recalling the decline and death of his best friend. Part Hunter S. Thompson and part Dostoevsky. Poems, memories, newspaper articles, dreams, and hallucinations are braided together, the timeline jumping abruptly from sentence to sentence, challenging the reader and setting up a mosaic of... of what? The problem is that, at bottom, there's not much to look at. A pathetic drunken sot wallowing in self-pity and guilt, remembering his childhood, his family ("My father won't help me ever again."), and his dead friend. It's just not very interesting material to build a story around

There are lots of wonderful quotes ("Until I was twenty I believed in Holy Mother Church. Between twenty and thirty, I believed in the Communist Party. From thirty to forty, I believed in Psychoanalysis. Now all I believe in is a full line on a bingo card."), pieces of songs, and half-remembered references to other works. There are interesting observations about Brazil and Brazilians and a fascinating introduction to modern Brazilian literature by translator John Parker. It's all interesting enough, lots of modernistic flash, but ultimately not a great novel.

This book is by a Brazilian writer and naval officer who lived from 1867-1897. It is the story of a black man, Bom-Crioulo, an escaped slave turned sailor, who falls in love with a white cabin boy. Blond, blue-eyed, and very pretty. The main reason to read this book is for its gay/lesbian/bi/trans historical value. And this edition helps you out in that respect by providing short introductory pieces telling you about the author's life and social mores and beliefs of the time, and giving you a literary context for the work. The book as a novel will likely be a frustrating experience, however. The description and symbolism are heavy-handed and repetitive, the characters are rather flat, and the author tends towards that common writing class "sin" of telling and analyzing, rather than showing the reader. Especially for readers of a liberal bent, the dated concepts about sexuality may also be frustrating. Finally, the story is not a happy one. The spiral of tragedy starts, and is very patently foreshadowed, just over half way through. A long, slow spiral indeed. I have given the book its stars, however, because of its subject matter. Especially in the author's time, and even in ours, it is controversial and often censored subject matter. It is a brave and valuable voice that deserves to be read.

In her book "Brazil", Jan Rocha itemizes a good selection of interesting and important national problems but then bogs down in anachronistic ideology. I purchased the book as an introduction to the country of Brazil and as a guidepost into more detailed topics, as well as to see Oxfam's perspective on these various issues. The book does well in summarizing familiar problems such as authoritatian politics and the minority landed oligarchy as well as obscure ones such as attempts to relate a gatherers' economy of babassu nut collection to the twenty-first political economy.
Problems within the book emerge when it tries to discuss these issues using a vocabulary somewhat related to 1960's Marxism. The "good guys" are the workers and aboriginal peoples who are shamelessly exploited by the "bad guys",the government-oligarchy
coalition. The middle class is curiously omitted suggesting the inuendo that perhaps it does not exist at all. For example after mentionning the government policy of rapid industrialization starting in the 1950's the book seems to imply that it was done without a domestic market.
No one denies that terrible attrocities have taken place in Brazil but this carping on negatives of the past fails to achieve a constructive purpose. The book mentions that the government set up a National Institute for Colonisation and Land Reform which has power to confiscate holdings of unproductive lands for redistribution (a very interesting idea for a developping country) but then it does not explain why it has seldom been used or even if it still exists.
Perhaps the last chapter on Carnival (holiday) is the best one. In this one case the book changes tack and identifies a positive role of Carnival by involving people of various factions within national culture. If other chapters were as good, it would be a highly recommendable book but as it stands it limits itself to identifying national issues and then presents a somewhat anachronistic ideological polemic for those who might appreciate it.

I got this book after reading Voyaging On A Small Income and was a bit disapointed. It is all written in the "first we did that and then we went here and did this"-fashion. They are just sailing to Brazil, as the title says.
Don't get me wrong. It is a good book about sailing to Brazil, but it just doesn't touch my fantasy as much as Voyaging On A Small Income. Also, I miss some information on the sailing. It's all about the destinations.

At 109 pages, this book never promises to be more than a quickie overview of Lula da Silva and Brazil's Workers' Party (PT), and it is useful in providing a bit of background for those looking to learn more about Lula, who was elected Brazil's president in October 2002. But it suffers from serious deficiencies.

First, it provides no deep analysis, even of seminal events in the life of Lula and the development of the PT party. Key events are just mentioned in passing, sort of a chronological narrative, but never placed into context. For example, the death of Lula's first wife in childbirth in 1970, considered crucial to his views on public health care is noted in one sentence. His current wife is named, but her key role in Lula's life is never described. Similarly, there is not a single mention of Jose Dirceu, a Sao Paulo revolutionary turned politician who emerged as the PT's savviest politician and is now Lula's most trusted advisor. There is no discussion about the internal debates in the labor movement that led up to the founding of the PT in 1980. The assessment of President Fernando Collor's political problems is head-shakingly weak: "Collor it seemed, had alienated the traditional centers of power and patronage."

The second deficiency is the book's overt leftist agenda. That's fine, we might suppose, nothing wrong with an author having an axe to grind. The problem is that the leftist propaganda here gets in the way of accuracy. Over and over we learn about the perfidious Brazilian right (sometimes emphasized by spelling it "Right") and its links to the press and other forces aligned against the PT good guys. This is especially grating when it comes to the 1994 elections. We read several strange diatribes blaming neoliberalism (and even "USA fashions") for Fernando Henrique Cardoso's come from behind victory over Lula. The author seems to believe that Lula deserved to be elected, but that the sneaky Cardoso used a tricky political strategy to win. Similarly, the Brazilian press ("Few ordinary Brazilian knew what the word 'scruples' meant, and the mass media were not about to enlighten them.") and conservative evangelicals ("[evangelicals] set up self-help networks just as the Muslim fundamentalists do.") come in for a beating because they do not support the PT.

There are a few inaccuracies and oversights that further weaken the text: the map fails to show the state of Tocantins, although it was founded seven years before the book was published; on p.48 we read that the PT was "officially founded in August 1980", when in fact it was founded six months earlier. There is but one photo of Lula, and none of any other PT leaders, even in the six little sections giving profiles of notable PT members. Overall, the research that went into this book appears to be mostly secondary sources, press, and a couple of other, better books. This is not a bad book for those interested in the PT and who only have a few hours to spare, but it is too thin and one-sided for the serious analyst.

Okay, lets face it--you're probably not going to buy this just for the recipes. But if you have someone who's both a cook and an old movie fan, they'll appreciate this.

Counselor Ayres, the character, was first found in Machado de Assis' previous novel, "Esau and Jacob" just as Quincas Borba appeared in "Epitaph of a Small Winner" before becoming the main character in another novel. The present volume is rather slow, perhaps "slight" is a fair word, and may leave action-oriented modern readers a little bored. The author shuns his usual catchy chapter titles in COUNSELOR AYRES' MEMORIAL, but he still uses his usual format of dividing the text into short sections because the novel is written in the form of a diary. While Machado de Assis shows in his usual, subtle way, that love is the glue that can hold both individuals and society together, the progress of the novel is languid and the text lacks entirely the wit and irony of his earlier works. Yet I found beauty in the book and sensed the nostalgia for a slower time.

We read a gentle story of an older diplomat (retired) watching the relationships develop and change among four or five other people in the Rio de Janeiro upper class of 1888-89. An attractive widow dedicated to her dead husband whom she had married against the wishes of her family; the godson of a doting old couple, otherwise childless, who returns to Rio after many years in Europe; the old couple themselves who love both widow and godson equally as the children they never had; a sister, an uncle, a malicious gossip---these are the characters we find moving in slow motion through the pages of a diary that reveals, but only slightly, the state of society in Brazil at the time. Slavery was abolished, the Empire had just come to an end, but Machado de Assis wrote more of playing cards, oil painting, piano recitals, and attendance at very European tea parties. It is a novel of a class that ignored the times, a class entirely wrapped up in its own interrelationships.

If you like the films of Merchant and Ivory or perhaps of Indian director Satyajit Ray, if you have a taste for novels that unfold slowly, at their own pace, you may like COUNSELOR AYRES' MEMORIAL because great events and intricate plots are not everything. Personally, I liked this novel, but as I found myself getting a little impatient at times, (and I like those Merchant and Ivory films) I wonder if it would appeal to many in our more-rushed age, hence the three stars. If Jorge Amado's wonderfully-descriptive novels of 20th century Brazil recall the samba and sexual vitality, Afro-Brazilian religion, color, and violence, this novel is more evocative of the piano adagios heard from afar on long-forgotten, hot January afternoons in bougainvillea-filled gardens of the vanished Brazilian aristocracy, and of people too "cultivated" to ever reveal their feelings in public.

This is a great book to see how countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Mexico made their structural reforms to fight for a democracy and to be part of the most potential countries in the region. Definitely, this is a book that the congressman in Paraguay should be reading, and every other country in Latin America that wants to follow potential countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico.

HARING'S ANALYSIS OF THE FAILURE OF THE MONARCHY IN BRAZIL DETAILS THE REASONS FOR THE FALL OF THE GOVERNEMENT IN THE 1880s. HIS ANALYSIS IS RATHER DRY, SO THIS IS NOT EXCITING READING. THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, AND THE LOSS OF SUPPORT FROM THE ARMED FORCES AND THE RICH PLANTERS RESULTED IN LOSS OF SUPPORT FOR THE REGIME OF EMPEROR DOM PEDRO II. DOM PEDRO WAS A RATHER ENLIGHTENED MONARCH, WHO WAS VERY MUCH LOVED BY THE MASSES. HOWEVER, POPULAR MEASURES SUCH AS THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY DID NOT ENDEAR HIM TO THE PEOPLE WHOSE SUPPORT HE NEEDED MOST.

The Female Face in Patiarchy: Oppression As Culture specifically explores the female participation in oppression by the Catholic Church and, thereby, slightly explores the oppression of women in American and Brazilian cultures generally. Without women's support the exploitation of women would cease in short order according to the authors of this scholarly work. Women not only support the supression of women in the Catholic Church, but actively supress women attempting to change the condition for themselves and others. The book is a radically feminist report that I would recommend to my Catholic friends and people in general. We all need to take a closer look at the condition we live in and take part in. There are times when a radical look will capture our attention more quickly than a subtle one. This is one. Can we afford to wait?