Customer Reviews

Jerusalem (Portuguese Literature Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tavares received such praise from Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago that I pre-ordered this. I wasn't disappointed and it truly is quite a first book.

Please take the time to read the Product Description (click 'See all Editorial Reviews' above). Since this is such a quick read, there is little more to tell about the plot that wouldn't give away too much.

We are witnesses to unsettling mental, physical and even moral problems. The characters vary from the elite to the troubled. Dark events are sometimes related with dark humor as we are shocked by Tavares depiction of their lives.

This is a sad and moving book, but it is not a 'tear-jerker' - and it is very well written. While I wish the book had been longer, the story to be told was handled quite well in this length. I'm hoping more of his books get translated quickly.

Much of this novel is set in a psychiatric asylum. Characters transition in and out of the asylum during the story and we are never quite sure at any given time if those who are in should be out and those who are out should be in. An unstable woman has a hard life, marries her psychiatrist and ends up institutionalized. He certainly hurt her more than he helped her. While institutionalized, she has a baby and then is sterilized without her consent. A murder of a young boy occurs and someone is sentenced for the murder, but it's not the murderer. The real murderer is not one of those who have been previously institutionalized. What does that tell us about how accurately this system of institutionalization functions? Will prison be any worse than the asylum for these damaged, borderline-functioning folks? That is pretty much the plot.

I wish I could say that there is a certain beauty in the lives of these damaged people but I don't see it - their lives are marginal and their stories are depressing. Every character in the book is profoundly sad. The characters go through the motions of living a life with their damaged capacities. What we do get are beautiful writing and some philosophical nuggets: "To be sick is to have made a mistake." "Working as a gravedigger means seeing your own future." "An animal that knew how to distance itself from empty pleasures would have a great biological advantage over human beings..." "At eighteen, Mylia already knew how to humiliate men." "...a single bullet weighs more than ten thousand words." "...the world inside and the world outside [the asylum] were like two separate languages - without a single phoneme in common."

While the work is translated from the Portuguese, there is no local color so it's not clear where the novel is set; obviously the intention of the author.