Symphony in White

by Adriana Lisboa, Sarah Green (Translator)

Overview

The two daughters of Afonso Olímpio and Otacília raised in rural Brazil in the 1960s and educated in teeming Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s form the counterpoint and central theme linking four generations: the pliant, troubled Clarice and the lovely, strong-willed Maria Inês. As other voices join in—those of the men they have married and the ones they have loved; the artist manqué Tomás; villagers and childhood friends; Great-Aunt Berenice in Rio; Eduarda, Maria Inês’s eighteen-year-old daughter—the cool, white calm of the sisters’ universe dissolves in a swirl of dark secrets. The family’s silences echo the unspoken atrocities of the military dictatorship holding sway in their country. But after the death of their mother forces Clarice and Maria Inês to face their shared past, an old score is settled. In a dramatic and powerful work of great beauty and harmony, Lisboa reveals the abysses of the human soul within a framework as delicate as a butterfly’s flight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780896726710
Publisher:	Texas Tech University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2010
Series:	THE AMERICAS Series
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Adriana Lisboa, born in Rio de Janeiro, holds degrees in music and literature and has worked as a flautist, Brazilian Jazz singer, and music teacher. The author of nine books, including four novels and a collection of short stories, she was awarded the José Saramago Prize in 2003 for Sinfonia em branco. Her books have been published in France, Italy, Sweden, and Mexico, among other countries, and she has translated into Portuguese such authors as Cormac McCarthy and Marilynne Robinson. She divides her time between Rio and Colorado.Sarah Green, who holds degrees from the University of Texas and Stanford University, is a translator and interpreter based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 2003 José Saramago Prize, this riveting novel follows two sisters from their childhood in rural Brazil into adulthood as they wrestle with a dark family secret. At 15, Clarice goes to live with a great-aunt in Rio de Janeiro, leaving Maria Ines, 11, behind to stir up trouble. As the years pass, their mother grows ever sicker and their massively abusive father drinks himself into a stupor. When Clarice returns home to marry, Maria Ines moves to Rio, where she ignites the passion of young artist Tomás, though her destiny seems to lie with her beloved second cousin, João Miguel. More than 20 years later, Maria Ines and her grown daughter return to the family home where Clarice now lives and where Tomás rents the farmhand's cottage, and a web of trauma, love, and betrayal waits to be unspooled. Lisboa (The Threads of Memory) deftly weaves together scenes of past and present, sister and sister, mother and daughter, and husband and lover, bringing the story to a satisfying crescendo. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly