ISBN: 0743293037
List Price: $24.00
Amazon Price: $15.60
Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy this book
from amazon.com
or from
amazon.co.uk
|
Avg Cusomer Rating: 1
Reviews:
Summary: Don't bother
This book is terrible. It takes place in Portugal which lead me to buy it. I love Portugal and the people. This book really didn't have much to do with Portugal other than a few words inserted here and there. I doubt the author has ever been there. The story line has no flow to it and it is way to choppy to follow. I hated it!
Summary: Disjointed stories, disappointing read
I wanted to like this book, but I, like several other reviewers, had to struggle to finish it, and it is a short book. Although the jacket blurb promises that all the characters will be "...brought together, and their jealousies and disappointments inevitably collide." as though Mamarrosa were a unifying point for all the characters and their stories. This does not prove to be the case. Nothing cataclysmic happens at the end. The much-heralded return of Mamarrosa's prodigal son does not add to the plotline. In fact, who is Marco Alfonso Rodrigues? There is little or no background on his life before he left the village to explain why everyone has such expectations of him. He says little, most of it obscure. His leavetaking is anticlimactic. Perhaps as Vasco says, "You know, the moment I saw him, I said to myself 'hippie'. And that is what he is." And perhaps Marco Alfonso is a hippie, albeit one with more serenity about him than the other old hippie expat, China Potts, who is addled by alcohol and marijuana.
Nothing in particular is revealed/resolved in the end, no plotlines tied up, except perhaps the relative reunification/redemption of the expatriate Potts family, the only expat characters who seem to interact much with the villagers. Several of the stories just peter out: does Teresa, the village girl ultimately leave the village for the au pair job in France? Do Huw and Sophie postpone their wedding, or break off their engagement in the end? Teresa has slept with her sweetheart, Francisco for the first time (She wants to leave the village as a woman.), but then afterward with Vincente who is engaged to her friend Clara. What is that about? Francisco is supposed to be her sweetheart, but after they spend the night together, he seems less interested in her. (My mother cautioned me that many men are like that.) Teresa's original plan is to break off with Francisco when she leaves anyway. Although she never does tell him this, he almost seems to have anticipated her. It seems that sleeping with him, her first experience, merely now makes her available to sleep with anyone. Was that her intent in leaving the village as a woman? None of the characters seems to have any particular purpose in life, except for Teresa who wants to leave for the au pair job, but even she seems to be unclear as to what she ultimately wants. Antonio is content to be an auto mechanic; Vicente and Clara who are engaged, do not seem to be really bonded, at least Vincente isn't.
Huw and Sophie don't seem to be all that sure that they should marry at all.
Ali introduces a different story every chapter, but one needs to get fairly far into the chapter to discover who is being introduced; how each new character or pair of characters fits into the story is unclear. What are they supposed to find in Mamarrosa? If this were a book of short stories, it would not matter, but these stories are all supposed to intersect in the village.
This book has been touted as one of the literary sensations of this summer. I cannot see what all the shouting was about.
Summary: A smart and absorbing read
ALENTEJO BLUE follows Monica Ali's highly acclaimed novel BRICK LANE, which I picked up and read recently so I could compare these two works. In both novels she displays her knack for description and detail, and it's quite clear that she's a gifted writer. However, while BRICK LANE seems to have problems with structure and a meandering plot, it still shows off her talent for characterization. The structure of the current novel is much tighter but again showcases her gift for creating life-like characters in such great detail that it's easy for the reader to picture every nuance, every slight body movement of each character featured.
While I warmed up to BRICK LANE right away, it took me longer to get into ALENTEJO BLUE. Each chapter reads almost like a separate short story, in which at first the reader will not see any connection among the chapters, except for the fact that they take place in the same tiny village of Mamarrosa in Portugal. Some of the individuals are visitors on vacation, and others are expatriates from Britain. For the most part, however, the villagers are people whose families have lived in this part of the country for generations. We get inside their heads, and Ali writes and creates her characters without holding back. There are plenty of expressive words scattered throughout, such as "farting" and "snots."
What joins each chapter with the next is the mention of a man who is expected to return home after many years of traveling. Marco is the son they are all proud of, and they're waiting for his arrival as if in anticipation of royalty or a big time international celebrity.
In the meantime, life goes on and we learn about the little details in the villagers' lives, including a family of British expatriates who are in Portugal because they're running away from their previous sordid lives. They live in poverty and are clearly quite dysfunctional. They inadvertently get involved with another Brit, a writer, who becomes involved sexually with the two women in the family (mother and daughter) and one can imagine how that ends up. Another interesting character details the story of a young woman who is about to make a choice: whether to stay with her man in Portugal or move away from the village to take a job as a nanny in England. And there's the shop owner who learns he's about to get competition from an Internet café; he spends his time seething about the indignity of it all, feeling that change is not always good.
What I found interesting was the overlap in each chapter; as we get to know each character and slowly get the feel of the village, they surface in other chapters. By the end of the book, when Marco finally returns home, almost every villager will express their opinions (or lack thereof) of this big event, and the reader finally gets to meet this mysterious Marco who has been made into some sort of hero. While the story of Marco is a loose thread that weaves itself through each chapter, ending with a surprise homecoming and disappointing a lot of people, the book ultimately is a character study of the people who make up the village. Marco is mentioned in each chapter and anticipating his return are villagers whose pathetic existence is made even more so when compared to the infamous Marco, who supposedly made his fortune by leaving this small Portuguese town. Ali does a wonderful job painting each of these lives, describing them with great detail so the reader can imagine the smells, sounds and feel of living in this village that seems to be stuck in time.
I recommend ALENTEJO BLUE for its descriptive writing and the wonderful way Ali creates characters who jump out at the reader and off the page. I anticipate her next novel and will be curious if she chooses yet another country in which to set her story, as she does a great job of absorbing a culture and letting the reader get a small glimpse of it.
--- Reviewed by Marie Hashima Lofton (Ratmammy@lofton.org)
Summary:
|
,
amazon.co.uk
,
google.com
