The Impostor

April 15, 2023
Two novellas that challenge the chronological conventions of narrative. This slim volume from a veteran Brazilian novelist (and film critic and diplomat) pairs two works from different eras: the 2020 title novella, translated by Hastings, followed by Blue Butterflies of the Amazon from 1996, translated by Neves. They are very different, though both feature a character who has suffered a stroke, and each concerns some interplay of chance and fate. The Impostor offers a first-person narrative by a veteran translator taking a trip to Italy with his wife. His impetus for the journey is to visit Vesuvius, where his great-granduncle fell into the volcano. Or jumped--accident or suicide? It was long ago and long forgotten, but the incident has fresh resonance for the protagonist, who had recently suffered what he insists on calling "a neurological issue. A minor one," in which he "disappeared someplace" for 20 days. The narrative flows across time and space, from descriptions of the Italian vacation to visits with the therapist who is trying to help him account for that lost time to bonding with his 16-year-old grandson. (The two of them smoke a joint and play video games, providing additional narrative confusion.) He also conjures characters, perhaps in dreams, who seem to know him, though he doesn't know them. Are they impostors? Or is he? By the end it appears that the trip he has been recounting is one he is still anticipating. The second, earlier novella focuses on sexual transgression across a couple of generations. An award-winning young scientist and his wife have returned to his family home to help his father after his mother suffered a stroke that has left her almost comatose. But she observes way more than she can communicate and more than her oblivious son does. Each of the four characters alternate narrating from their very different perspectives, with surprising results. These inventive novellas are like literary puzzles for the reader to tease out.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 24, 2023
Brazilian writer Ribeiro (His Own Man) offers two elegant novellas, each an atmospherically charged investigation of consciousness, familial ties, legacy, and language. In the title work, the unnamed narrator, an elderly translator, recovers from a stroke, then takes a vacation to Naples in homage to an ancestor who, according to lore, fell into the volcano at Mount Vesuvius. The translator imagines what drew his ancestor from Brazil to the volcano in the early 20th century, and he calls himself an “inveterate traveler... wavering between the past and the future.” Elizabeth, the narrator of “Blue Butterflies of the Amazon” has also had a stroke, leaving her paralyzed and mute. Her husband, Thomas, and daughter-in-law, Deborah, begin having sex with each other—sometimes right in front of her. Eventually, Deborah gets pregnant and later miscarries. The narration alternates between the novella’s various characters, and though they’re each distinctive, Elizabeth’s is the most complex, as she notes how “forgiveness, hatred, and pleasure intertwine” within her while she watches the drama unfold. These crystalline stories form a memorable diptych. Agent: Thomas Colchie, Colchie Agency.