Far from negligible, but more of a piquant curiosity than a fully achieved work of fiction.
The noted Cape Verde writer makes his US debut with this trim 1991 novel recounting the withdrawn and timid life of a Babbitt-like businessman.
The narrative begins most promisingly when the reading of the title document, actually constituting the “memoirs” of the deceased, “consume . . . [s] an entire afternoon.” Señor Napumoceno’s scheming nephew Carlos, who has made himself a power in his uncle’s thriving import-export business, is bitterly disappointed when the majority of the inheritance goes to Maria da Graça, Napumoceno’s daughter by his acquiescent cleaning lady. Graça’s efforts to piece together and understand her late father’s secretive life, in addition to delivering a gift to an unknown woman whom he had perhaps loved, combine with the text of the will itself to depict Napumoceno as a fussbudget and semirecluse, reluctant to embrace commitment or change (e.g., his compulsive habit of buying one new suit every two years). The overall shape and thrust of the tale are amusing and initially arresting, particularly when the success of Araújo, Ltd., is attributed to an erroneous purchase of thousands of umbrellas just prior to an unprecedented period of extended rain. But Almeida repeats essentially similar illustrations of Carlos’s mendacity and of his uncle’s plaintive passing attempts to involve himself in politics (as a nondescript city councilman), become a writer of sorts (“everything that was related to his life was important and worth noting for posterity”), and allow love into his life—preferably by marrying, however late in life, but complicated by a lingering, “demented” passion for a mercurial, possibly unstable, and much younger woman. Napumoceno is a distant relative of Marquand’s George Apley and Brazilian master Machado de Assis’s convention-bound everymen, but we never see him in anything like the rich varied detail with which these literary kin are created.
Far from negligible, but more of a piquant curiosity than a fully achieved work of fiction.Pub Date: June 28, 2004
ISBN: 0-8112-1565-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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