Customer Reviews

An Explanation of the Birds: A Novel

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As Rui S., 33 year old professor of political science and failed husband, son, and lover, looks back on his limited accomplishments, he contemplates his future and finds it particularly bleak. The son of a powerful and wealthy industrialist, Rui turned his back on the family business, studied the liberal arts, and joined the Communist Party. He married Tucha, a beautiful shrew, and fathered two children. We spend the entire book following a torrent of memories that washes over and around and through glimpses of the present. What distinguishes An Explanation of the Birds from other novels of its type is the manner of the telling. Past and present inter-mingle on the page with no markings or divisions acting as cues to the reader. Scenes from the past share space with scenes from the present within the same paragraph. It's a remarkable strategy that demands the reader remain ever attentive, but the effect is mesmerizing and works in a manner reminiscent of the magic realism of Garcia Marquez or Donoso. The novel is also cynically critical of modern Portugal, and of politics in general. Rui S. emerges as pathetic, his female companions as heartless, and his family as emotionally vapid and effete. Not a pretty picture. It is a novel worth reading for its brilliant technique, not necessarily for the warmth of its characterizations.

This is a ironic tale of a ordinay fellow on a particular situation. The life of Rui is a very ordinary one, divorced and married again, college professor, communist or maybe not, an ordinay wife. Rich son married with a communist lower-class wife. Now he tries to change this. Get a new life but how?