I have now finished this book, which is the fourth book of our book club. The previous books took us to Africa, Europe and North America and this one landed us in the South America of the early 20^th century.

When I started reading I knew nothing about the book, it was suggested by D and all I did was order it and then opened it to start reading. I got stuck right on the first page as I needed to google to see whether Sofia Salvador was a real person (The Water Dancer is to blame for that…). Few more pages in and I got stuck again, this time with the Portuguese words - how do you pronounce them and what do they mean? Here, I’d like to thank Google Translate for help. Finally, I had to research all the various instruments that get a mention cuíca, reco-reco, cavaquinho, agogô, pandeiro. Now, with that out of the way I could get lost in the story.

I read the first half of the 500 pages in two days. The story and the structure of the narrative is very engaging, as we meet Dores in her old age and get glimpses of her “current” situation and life while she recounts the story of her life from the beginning. We learn that Graça, whose story the book evolves around, is dead few pages in but it is only slowly revealed that she did not die of old age. From that realisation onwards I just wanted to know why and how she died, so I kept on reading…

I do not know a lot about samba, I may not have even been aware that it originated in Brazil. I wish the songs that are opening each chapter of the book were also included in Portuguese. I would like to know if de Pontes Peebles made them up or if they are translations or inspirations of existing songs. I wish I could hear them.

The narrator and main character  - Dores (ok, you could argue that Graça is the main character but I’d rather call her a leitmotif) is both vulnerable and fearless, both of which makes it very easy for the reader to identify with. She is a victim by circumstance but not by nature. She may not know what she wants but she is very clear on what she doesn’t want. She runs hot and cold, cruel and gentle but somehow she is all that in a completely unobjectionable and endearing way.

Well, I will stop here and wait for our book club discussion…

UPDATE:

Well, to be frank it has been a month since our bookclub discussion and I remember very little and no notes were taken by me. Nevertheless, I found it interesting how, yet again, we differed in our perceptions. Was Graça the strangler fig tree or Dores? Who betrayed who? And who, if anyone, was responsible for Graça’s death?

We all agreed that the language sometimes came though as if the text were a translation and we spent some time googling the book in Portuguese translation and found out that the book is called Tempo de Graça, Tempo de Dor, which can be translated as Graça’s Time, Dores’ Time. I would like to know why they would choose to publish it under that name rather than stick with the air.

One of us struggled with the musical undercurrent of the story while another one indulged in it and we ended up comparing notes on our relationships to music and musical education growing up.

All in all, I think each of us learnt something new, be it a name of a samba instrument, a few words of Portuguese or some Brazilian and Hollywood history.