Customer Reviews

The Maias

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If Eça de Queirós had been English, Russian, or French he would be world famous and "The Maias" would be universally recognized as one of the greatest novels ever written. It's a stinging picture of Portugal in the 1870s, its still-wealthy aristocracy alternating between vapid love affairs and wittily despairing conversations about the impossibility of being anything or anyone in such a hopeless country. It's an affectionate but honest portrait of two friends, both of them gifted and both of them without the seriousness to live up to their gifts, and a portrait of Lisbon, a once great imperial capital by then in terminal decline. It's an intense and passionate love story, told with a frankness about physical love that breaks every stereotype there is about nineteenth century prudery. In 600 pages it gives us a whole world and a crowd of memorable people, all of them seen with both unsparing clarity and great love. Yet for all of its passion and sadness the book is written with a light touch; some of the early chapters are high comedy, and there can be few masterpieces of fiction that are as enjoyable to read. This cannot be recommended highly enough, and Margaret Jull Costa's brilliant translation, though a little heavy on the exclamation points, has been preferred by all the reviewers to the translation available from Penguin.

It's a shame Eça de Queirós wrote in a "small" language. It's taken forever to get a fine translation in English of his greatest book, "The Maias." Set in the milieu of the 19th century Portuguese aristocracy (already an exotic world for English-speakers), "The Maias" tells the tale of three generations of a great and noble family, following its decline and fall. It sounds gloomy, but that's not the case at all -- the book brims with humor and affection for the main characters, even as it gleefully skewers the pretensions, follies and small-mindedness of the decadent Portuguese upper classes. Eça is absolutely masterful in his powers of description, whether of individuals or decor, of scenery or gastronomy. Although it's a sprawling saga, the action moves along and Eça easily maintains the reader's interest as the story progresses to its scandalous and tragicomic end. Meanwhile, the reader has been pulled into a truly vanished world of endless fascination.

Lovers of Jane Austen are especially likely to enjoy "The Maias." The environment and social class of Eça's characters are grander than Austen's, and the book's scale is much larger, but Eça shares Austen's gift of being able to portray his characters' foibles and weaknesses without hating them or making them mere caricatures. Austen and Eça have very similar senses of irony. (Eça spent years living in England, so it's likely he knew Austen's work.) Some of Eça's earlier works, like "The Crime of Father Amaro," are more bitter and sardonic, but by the time he wrote "The Maias" he seems to have mellowed and grown more affectionate and forgiving towards his declining homeland and its vapid society.

Those who love this masterpiece will enjoy many of Eça's other books, which fortunately have been translated in the past few years by the same talented translator. It's a joy to have the works of one of the world's greatest writers finally available to the English-reading public!

This is a beautifully written novel(I don't read Portuguese, so I have to assume this is an accurate translation), but I just could not get into this work and gave up after about 100 pages. The pace is too languid and the characters are not that interesting or appealing. The back cover cites a review comparing Queiros to Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. Well, I've read a lot of Dickens and Tolstoy and some Balzac and Queiros does not compare to any of those giants. I would rather spend my time reading Dickens, Tolstoy and Balzac.