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A review by prolixity
Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis
2.0
This book was so tragically boring that it took me four months to read it.
I find this tragic because on the back of my copy it is described as “Machado’s masterpiece” and I loved The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by the same author, but good god Dom Casmurro fails in every way to live up to it. Machado de Assis still uses all his literary and rhetorical tricks, his meta references and his asides to the reader, but unfortunately they’re all in service of a story that is mediocre in every way. The characters are indistinct, the plot only gains impetus in the final ten pages, the narrator’s voice is less wry and unique than the late Bras Cubas’ was.
Rarely have I experienced such a distinction between the style of a story and its content—I loved the way this was told but absolutely could not care less about what it was telling.
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Global Challenge: Brazil
I find this tragic because on the back of my copy it is described as “Machado’s masterpiece” and I loved The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by the same author, but good god Dom Casmurro fails in every way to live up to it. Machado de Assis still uses all his literary and rhetorical tricks, his meta references and his asides to the reader, but unfortunately they’re all in service of a story that is mediocre in every way. The characters are indistinct, the plot only gains impetus in the final ten pages, the narrator’s voice is less wry and unique than the late Bras Cubas’ was.
Rarely have I experienced such a distinction between the style of a story and its content—I loved the way this was told but absolutely could not care less about what it was telling.
____________________
Global Challenge: Brazil