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18ck 's review for:
Pereira Maintains
by Antonio Tabucchi
This is a slow-burner: It's not exactly a thriller and there are few laughs, but the quiet life of Pereira leading up to his act of defiance in Lisbon in the Salazar era (while Civil war rages in neighbouring Spain and Europe braces for a more general conflagration) contrasts with the violence with which he is wrenched out of inertia, and the whole novel feel more believable as a result.
Philosophically, it is more pragmatic than the other novel I've been reading ("36 Arguments for the Existence of God"), and it conveys its message more subtly, but ultimately more effectively without the intellectual fireworks. The only thing I didn't like - funnily enough - was the device of writing in what seemed at first like a police report style ("Pereira Maintains that..."), even in describing situations that would make absolutely no sense in that context. Although it gives the book its title, I'm sorry to say, every time it happened it just got on my nerves. I assume that it's a phrase that hasn't translated well from the writer's native Italian.
Philosophically, it is more pragmatic than the other novel I've been reading ("36 Arguments for the Existence of God"), and it conveys its message more subtly, but ultimately more effectively without the intellectual fireworks. The only thing I didn't like - funnily enough - was the device of writing in what seemed at first like a police report style ("Pereira Maintains that..."), even in describing situations that would make absolutely no sense in that context. Although it gives the book its title, I'm sorry to say, every time it happened it just got on my nerves. I assume that it's a phrase that hasn't translated well from the writer's native Italian.