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Leche Derramada (2009)

by Chico Buarque(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Océano / Salamandra

review 1: Book Club 1 Unrated (I recuse myself from rating this book)I understand this book, the metaphor the old gentleman is the Old Brazil of slave holders, prejudices and power of the ruling upper class and Eurocentric while his wife Matilda is the new Brazil or the masses or the "vulgar" which by the way the old order helped create by importing slaves.... The new Brazil has taken over the old Brazil as the old man chronicles the loss of all his lands, properties and privileges while he dies in an infirmary for the aged. While chronicling his past life and that of his illustrious forbearers, meant to mirror Brazilian history and colonial triumphs but is interspersed by his personal family's squandering and fortune reversals he recites this in an Alzheimer's demented fog. My ... moreproblem with this book is personal - In my life I am personally dealing with four (4) family members with Alzheimer's/dementia and I've seen it all! I don't care to hear some old fart telling me his sexual exploits, drug trips, sexual and racial hang-ups even if it's cathartic for the Brazilians to move on; that is why I am not giving this book a rating.
review 2: iNot as funny as Jodi Picoult said in a recent interview in the New York Times Book Review, but a worthwhile read for its insights into race and class relations in Brazil. Requires active participation from the reader to try and find out what really happened to the wife's narrator, since the narrator, who is dying in hospital, keeps changing his story depending on which nurse is on duty and what state he is in. Obviously something went terribly wrong with his marriage but what exactly happened remains undecidable. At the end of the book I concluded that the combination of the trauma experienced by the narrator and his deep-seated prejudices disabled him from admitting to anybody, including himself, what had led to his wife's disappearance and/or death. less

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