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wannabemensch's review against another edition
3.0
This started out so wonderfully magical and fairytale-like. And then it wasn't wonderful and fairytale-like anymore. :(
juliechristinejohnson's review
4.0
A quiet but fierce novel. Set in Brazil (it's important to me to know WHERE I am as I read- I'm geographically-anal so I put together various clues- a severe drought in NE Brazil in the early 1980s, sugar cane industry, zebu cows, a great southern city, the Amazon. Then I read two 2002 interviews with Mason where he stated he was working on a novel set in Brazil...) Mason offer the mystical, mythology, a sense of fable- all swirling like feathery clouds through the stony reality of poverty, famine, drought, civil unrest, racism, slums and violence. Isabel leaves the protection of her family circle in a village stricken by drought and famine in the country's north to seek her beloved older brother, Isaias. Isaias ran off to find his fortune as a musician in the country's fabled city of gold and the family fears what has become of him.
Most of the book follows Isabel's quest to find her brother from her journey south to her life in the city, where she shares a one room flat in the projects with her cousin and minds the cousin's baby. The baby becomes her companion during her increasingly bold circuits through her neighborhood and eventually into the city in search of her cherished soulmate and kin. Isabel is barely a teen but carries the depressed and resigned soul of someone decades her elder. Her wanderings seem aimless and the plot vague, but it comes together with a rush of breath and a bittersweet resolution.
Mason's writing is beautiful, lyrical, full of vision, impression. This nearly gets in the way of plot development, but he is still a joy to read.
Most of the book follows Isabel's quest to find her brother from her journey south to her life in the city, where she shares a one room flat in the projects with her cousin and minds the cousin's baby. The baby becomes her companion during her increasingly bold circuits through her neighborhood and eventually into the city in search of her cherished soulmate and kin. Isabel is barely a teen but carries the depressed and resigned soul of someone decades her elder. Her wanderings seem aimless and the plot vague, but it comes together with a rush of breath and a bittersweet resolution.
Mason's writing is beautiful, lyrical, full of vision, impression. This nearly gets in the way of plot development, but he is still a joy to read.
daschneider's review
3.0
The main character, Isabel, lives in a village that is being destroyed by drought and modernization. At age 14-15, she is sent by her parents to the city, to find her missing brother and to work and send money home. The dreamlike nature of her story, as well as her diminishing ability to “see” the unseen, took up too much of the story for my taste. While I adored The Winter Soldier and this book shared much of the same writing style, the way the author placed the story in an unnamed country and time made it less appealing to me.
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