Probably the book that, more than any other, has made me reconsider my
relation with magical realism. I read this after coming back from our honeymoon
in Brazil, and my huge expectations were simply not met. For the first hundred pages or so, the
descriptions of the surreal daily life in the Pelourinho (Salvador’s historic
centre) are funny and entertaining – but after more than four hundred pages
this definitely grows old.
Vadinho is an interesting character, probably more so than the titular
Dona Flor, but that’s simply not enough to carry a book of this size, and even
his phantasmagorical apparitions become stale quite quickly. And it’s such a
shame that I can’t appreciate the author of the books that were the first gift
from my dad to my mom (and also, according to the former, the main reason why
she agreed to go out with him in the first place).
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