Blues for a Lost Childhood [Paperback]

Antonio Torres (Author), John Parker (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The nameless narrator of Torres's ( The Land ) novel writes from the depths of an insomniac's drunken stupor. Visited in hallucinations by dead family members, he reconsiders his past and theirs. The failed integration of inhabitants of his poverty-stricken province into the corrupt cities of Brazil; the aimlessness engendered by a dictatorship imposed some 20 years earlier in a 1964 military coup; the political and religious struggles that have swept the narrator's native Brazil--all do battle in the person of his late cousin, Calunga. The great hope of his small town in the dusty northeastern Bahia state, Calunga finds fame as a journalist but follows a rapid downward spiral of despair, alcohol and self-destruction in Sao Paulo and Rio. Superbly translated, Torres succeeds brilliantly in orchestrating the narrator's visions, memories, lullabies, poetry and dialogues with lost relatives into a cohesive whole.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Portugese --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: Readers International (October 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930523687
• ISBN-13: 978-0930523688
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,058,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars More Style Than Substance, March 9, 2003

By 

richard_t "richard_t" (Overseas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blues for a Lost Childhood (Paperback)

Antonio Torres' 1986 Brazilian novel is stylistically interesting, but despite the rave reviews it received, it never really reaches greatness. It comes across as style over substance. Torres' is among the generation of Brazilian authors whose voice was forged during the 1964-1985 military regime. Self-censorship, obliqueness, wry observation, and double-meanings were their stock in trade. The most interesting element in "Blues for a Lost Childhood" is the strange construction: a nameless self-pitying narrator in a drunken stupor recalling the decline and death of his best friend. Part Hunter S. Thompson and part Dostoevsky. Poems, memories, newspaper articles, dreams, and hallucinations are braided together, the timeline jumping abruptly from sentence to sentence, challenging the reader and setting up a mosaic of... of what? The problem is that, at bottom, there's not much to look at. A pathetic drunken sot wallowing in self-pity and guilt, remembering his childhood, his family ("My father won't help me ever again."), and his dead friend. It's just not very interesting material to build a story around

There are lots of wonderful quotes ("Until I was twenty I believed in Holy Mother Church. Between twenty and thirty, I believed in the Communist Party. From thirty to forty, I believed in Psychoanalysis. Now all I believe in is a full line on a bingo card."), pieces of songs, and half-remembered references to other works. There are interesting observations about Brazil and Brazilians and a fascinating introduction to modern Brazilian literature by translator John Parker. It's all interesting enough, lots of modernistic flash, but ultimately not a great novel.