The Implacable Order of Things [Paperback]

Jose Luis Peixoto (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 2009

Winner of the José Saramago Literary Award

In an unnamed Portuguese village, against a backdrop of severe rural poverty, two generations of men and women struggle with love, violence, death, and—perhaps worst of all—the inescapability of fate.
 
A pair of twins conjoined at the pinky, a 120-year-old wise man, a shepherd turned cuckold by a giant, and even the Devil himself make up the unforgettably oddball cast of The Implacable Order of Things. As these lost souls come together and drift apart, José Luís Peixoto masterfully reveals the absurd, heartbreaking, and ultimately bewitching aspects of human nature in a literary performance that heralds the arrival of an astoundingly gifted and poetic writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two generations of ordinary Portuguese villagers share a town with Bosch-like grotesques in this grim, repetitive debut fantasia from Peixoto. In a poor, unnamed town, an unrelenting sun beats down on José, a shepherd, as he's told by the devil that his wife is having an affair with a giant. Meanwhile, one of a pair of twins (joined at the pinky) falls in love with a widowed cook; at the age of 70, she has a child. Years later, José's son falls in love with the wife of his cousin Salomão, and, again it is the devil who smilingly bears the news to the cuckolded man. Several of the townspeople find refuge from stasis and malaise in suicide. Through shifting points of view (the female characters are not named), repeated phrases and the allegorical setting, Peixoto aims to manifest a subtle connection between the townspeople, a kind of superconsciousness. Throughout, plot takes a back seat to the bleak, stultifying atmosphere. The result is a nihilistic look at rural life in particular and human affairs in general. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Splendidly demanding.... The images Peixoto evokes in helping his characters communicate without words are singular and unforgettable.... Nature appears to prevail as the governing force, and Peixoto's brilliance and power as an artist are precisely in his desire to mimic nature's ability to create and destroy simultaneously.”—San Francisco Chronicle"José Luís Peixoto is one of the most surprising revelations in recent Portuguese literature.”—José Saramago“Brilliantly rendered episodic tales of rural loss.... Peixoto's evocation of pathos is tempered by a keen sense of the absurd. His ironic sensibility shines through beautifully in this translation.”—Financial Times“Peixoto offers an appealing addition to the genre of rural magical realism…. [A] poignant debut."—Kirkus Reviews“Peixoto's bold, incantatory prose is consistently beautiful… simple but also incredibly rich and resonant. ….The external narrator's own wise words are picked up and repeated by the characters, as though these portentous lines, these profound thoughts are out there… like great discovered truths. That even these weighty lines are moving and thought-provoking, rather than pretentious, is further testament to the author's considerable skills.”—The Independent (UK)“[The Implacable Order of Things] poses difficult questions and challenges the reader… but the patient reader finds great rewards.”—The Australian“You read and breathe as if you were downing a bottle of life in one gulp.”—Le Figaro “Peixoto comes from the world of poetry and of the theatre. And this can be sensed here. His pages, purified in the lyrical prose that makes them unique, introduce us to a rural space burned by the sun, inhabited by the singing of the cicadas and suspended in a mythical time where each action has a biblical inevitability.”—Vogue Italia

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030738828X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307388285
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,067,702 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Implacable Order of Things, August 20, 2008

By 

Toto "Dorothy" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Implacable Order of Things: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Implacable Order of Things is a story told in an irrestistible and mesmerizing voice. After being captivated page after page by strange and haunting happenings, one finds it difficult to leave such a mythical place when the author's last sentence demands it. The life and fate of each inhabitant existing in such an unforgiving arid landscape still feeds my imagination as if I'd been walking the dusty roads myself.
It is a novel not easily retired to the bookshelf and my favorite so far this year.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love versus inertia, hope versus fate, September 5, 2008

By 

Jane W. Elioseff (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Implacable Order of Things: A Novel (Hardcover)

The primary plot of this remarkable novel involves rape, adultery, and murder. Even so, taken entire, the book is not as dark or its characters as grotesque as some reviewers have made them seem. It comprehends many ironies and has scenes of pure comedy. The devil officiates at weddings and funerals in a church with no altar and no sacristy. A ceaseless voice shut up in a chest offers this hypothesis: "Perhaps suffering is tossed by handfuls over the multitudes, with most of it falling on some people and little or none of it on others." The voice also wonders whether people exist.

An elderly, newly married shepherd, whose first child is still in the womb, may be the character who thinks, "Perhaps there's a light inside people, perhaps a clarity; perhaps people aren't made of darkness, perhaps certainties are a breeze inside people, and perhaps people are the certainties they possess."

He only "may be" the character: I had identified at least seven distinct narrators before I stopped trying to sort them out. Because Peixoto is a poet, the earth, the sky, the village and all of its material objects are also telling the story.

The shepherd has married a much younger woman who remembers their first encounter in images that match his sensibility: "It happened in the April when I started working at the rich people's house. On that late afternoon, balmy like this one, José arrived from the fields when I was leaving. We stopped and looked at each other. He said good afternoon, and his voice was part of that soft light. In the sky above us, a stork glided by very slowly, its wings wide open, carrying a dry stick in its very long beak. And that moment was ours and enormous. Looking at me steadily, he said wait for me, tonight I'll come and fetch you. And on that day I didn't feel the long walk to town as I feel it today, every single step."

José, remembering the same meeting, tells us he didn't go. "Even though I'd waited all my life for that moment, unique among all moments . . . Even though a stork rose up in flight, gliding like an embrace we've never known but imagine to be possible, even though I looked at her with my whole being . . . even though the twilight had seen us where only sincere souls go, I came into this room, lay down on this bed, let that unique moment pass by indistinctly, and let my life become a painful place of squandered moments."

I don't know Portuguese, so I can't comment on Richard Zenith's English translation except to say that it is a joy to read. "Nenhum Olhar," the second of Peixoto's three published novels, came out in Lisbon in 2000 and won a major literary prize. The Zenith translation was published in hardback late last year in London under the title "Blank Gaze," which is a direct translation of nenhum olhar. This summer in the US, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday published the same English translation as an attractive, well made paperback, "The Implacable Order of Things."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, September 23, 2009

By 

hmar (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Implacable Order of Things (Paperback)

Unique and quite fantastic. I am reading it in English but am anxious to read the Portuguese version. Beautiful book - have not read something as good in a while.