Wall Street Journal - Sam Sacks
"A big, satisfying national saga... A long, immersive novel that parcels out information and plot turns at a methodical pace. This feels very natural: The novel is a flexible art form, of course, but among its signal virtues are patience and deliberation. Depicting the decline of an old order is something it is uniquely good at doing and there is great pleasure to be had in Ms. Jorge’s confident handling of the classic subject. As private desires clash with public appearance, a quiet moral accounting emerges in Milene’s consciousness. 'What did goodness have to do with strength?' she wonders. 'Were the two qualities mutually repellant?' The answer is as layered and ambiguous as the rest of this fine book."
Anderson Tepper
"The novel moves rhythmically, as if wavering under the blazing sun...This is a thrillingly immersive 'parable about life, about the struggle between rich and poor, between one race and another.' Even the trees and surrounding landscape—'mute figures who, of course, had knowledge and memory'—have their point of view."
Booklist - Laura Chanoux
"Award-winning Jorge’s richly layered family epic, in its first English translation, examines racial, social, and economic history in Portugal."
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2022-01-12
The fates and fortunes of two Portuguese families become entwined during the later years of the 20th century.
The lonely death of Dona Regina, the matriarch of the influential Leandro family, prompts her granddaughter Milene to investigate its circumstances so she can explain them to the rest of her extended family, all of whom are out of reach on vacation at the time. Milene, an opaque and guileless sort, revisits the site of her grandmother’s demise, the family’s former cannery on the Portuguese coast. Her futile investigative efforts bring her into the orbit of the Mata family, the current tenants of the cannery, who have turned it into their family compound. The welcome extended to her by the Matas, working-class immigrants from Cape Verde, contrasts (in almost every measurable way) with the hand-wringing, anger, and annoyance Milene’s presence provokes within her own family. Jorge manages to recapitulate many of the issues present in post-colonial Portugal—racism, workers’ rights, sexism, economic disparities, overdevelopment—within the context of Milene’s developing romance with one of the Matas, but she never lets the didactic get in the way of the romantic. An anonymous and enigmatic narrator propels much of the narrative while essential aspects of Milene’s sometimes-puzzling character are slowly revealed. Present in both families are key actors and bit players living a thoroughly 20th-century life in Portugal: the White cannery scions are succeeded on their landholdings by the Black Matas, who have produced a pop star (tuna replaced by tunes?). As translated from the Portuguese by the team of Jull Costa and McDermott, who provide an extensive introduction to the work, Jorge’s narrative ranges from the lyrical to the mundane but conveys the universality of a specific, familial place.
Jorge delivers a dose of near-contemporary history tempered by a page-turning family saga and romance.
