Category: Bracher Beatriz

Ten books for Spanish and Portuguese Lit Month

1st July 2019 / / 1 Comment

I don’t know quite where half the year has gone, but it’s July, which means it is Spanish and Portuguese Literature Month (hosted this year by Stu at Winstonsdad’s Blog). I look forward to this month, because I invariably come across some great books. I thought I would start by taking a look back through my archives. Here are ten recommendations (six translated from Spanish, two from Portuguese, one from Basque, one from Catalan), with links to my reviews…

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Bilbao – New York – Bilbao by Kirmen Uribe (Basque Country), tr. Elizabeth Macklin – A novel about the history of its author’s fishing family, lives that grow larger in the telling.

I Didn’t Talk by Beatriz Bracher (Brazil), tr. Adam Morris – A retiring academic who survived torture by the military dictatorship in the 1970s reflects on the impossibility of telling a coherent story about the past.

My Sweet Orange Tree by José Mauro de Vasconcelos (Brazil), tr. Alison Entrekin – A classic tale of childhood chronicling the adventures of a charming young protagonist, which carries a poignant sting at the end.

Nona’s Room by Cristina Fernández Cubas (Spain), tr. Kathryn Phillips-Miles and Simon Deefholts – Six eerie stories of unstable reality.

No-one Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi (Argentina), tr. Nick Caistor – An ex-policeman is framed for murder in a novel that presents its world as an intractable puzzle of corruption which resists attempts to be solved.

Seeing Red by Lina Meruane (Chile), tr. Megan McDowell – The story of a woman who loses her sight suddenly, then finds herself having to work life out anew.

The Slaughter Yard by Esteban Echeverría (Argentina), tr. Norman Thomas di Giovanni and Susan Ashe – The oldest piece of Argentine prose fiction this is the story of a young man killed by a mob for his political beliefs. A tale of powerful imagery and metaphor.

Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (Catalonia), tr. Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell – The tumult of early 20th century history, experienced through one woman’s ordinary (yet extraordinary) life.

Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue (Mexico), tr. Natasha Wimmer – A tennis match between Caravaggio and Quevedo, played across the sweep of early modern history.

A Vineyard in Andalusia by Maria Dueñas (Spain), tr. Nick Caistor and Lorenza García – A highly enjoyable historical yarn that moves from Mexico to Cuba and then Spain, as a miner who’s set to lose everything tries his best to stay afloat.

I Didn’t Talk – Beatriz Bracher

7th August 2018 / / 0 Comments

“Stories are the shape we give things to pass the time on the bus, in line at the bank, at the bakery counter,” says Gustavo, the protagonist of I Didn’t Talk (the first novel by Brazilian writer Beatriz Bracher to appear in English translation, and the latest selection from the Asymptote Book Club). Gustavo would like to tell his story, if it could exist as a thought without word, without shape. He is a professor of education, sorting through his papers as he prepares to retire. In 1970, he was arrested and tortured under the military dictatorship, along with his brother-in-law Armando, who was killed. Gustavo is adamant that he did not give Armando up: he didn’t talk.

But he’s talking now. He has been introduced to a young woman, Cecília, who is writing a novel set at the time of the dictatorship, and would like to interview him as part of her research. Gustavo reflects on the nature of that research:

After these interviews she’ll know more about the period than the people who lived through it. But, as under torture, they each will tell her only what doesn’t threaten, what doesn’t weigh on their present. And so, perhaps it’s not possible to have a collective return to what happened, only an individual one.

(translation by Adam Morris)

So, any story that Cecília tells about that time will necessarily be a composite put together from fragments. There are also other kinds of shifting, partial stories surrounding Gustavo, such as the unpublished autobiographical novel by his brother José, which deviates from his own recollections. Furthermore, Gustavo’s story as he tells it is itself a composite, switching back and forth (seemingly as whim takes him) between personal memories, accounts of the present, and commentary on language and education.

By novel’s end, Gustavo has told a story of himself, shapeless as it might seem to him. In the process, he examines what it is to have lived through his experiences, and confronts the implications of seeking not to rock the boat in life subsequently. It feels a little glib to end on a pun and say that I Didn’t Talk speaks eloquently, but… that’s what the book does. This is a strong English-language debut from Bracher; I hope there is more to come.

Book details

I Didn’t Talk (2004) by Beatriz Bracher, tr. Adam Morris (2018), New Directions, 149 pages, paperback (source: personal copy).

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