Allende’s fluidly written saga conveys her deep familiarity with the events she depicts, and her intent to illustrate their human impact in a moving way. The scope spans most of the lives of Victor Dalmau, a Republican army medic in 1936 Spain, and Roser Bruguera, a music student taken in by Victor’s family and, later, his brother Guillem’s lover and the mother of Guillem’s child. The story follows them over nearly sixty years, beginning with the tumult of the Spanish Civil War. Guillem is killed fighting against the Fascists, news that Victor can’t bear to tell Roser initially. After surviving separate and terrible circumstances that leave them refugees in France, where authorities treat them with contempt and worse, the two marry for practical reasons in order to join Pablo Neruda’s mission transporting over 2000 Spanish exiles to Chile aboard the S.S. Winnipeg . In Santiago, the Dalmaus find many Chileans sympathetic to the Spaniards, while others make them unwelcome. With a poetic ...
The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles, an epic of friendship, ambition, and music set in 1920s-30s Brazil
The two first meet as girls, when Graça and her parents move into the plantation’s Great House. Graça is strong-willed, selfish, and unmistakably charismatic. They share an education (at Graça’s insistence) and adventures, and an excursion to a big-city concert kindles their musical interest and ambitions for greater achievements. This was a time when LPs and phonographs seemed like magic, and the era is conjured up brilliantly. The girls dream of becoming radio stars together, Graça’s mellifluous voice complementing Dores’ raspier tones. Their path takes them from the diverse nightlife scene of Lapa in Rio to the movie studios of Los Angeles, where Graça, as “Brazilian Bombshell” Sofia Salvador, performs her unique brand of South American entertainment. Alongside Graça’s upward trajectory, Dores partners with a guitarist to write songs the others make famous.
The women’s relationship vacillates between symbiosis and rivalry, all the while shaped by outside forces and unreciprocated desire. Looking back from old age, Dores narrates in a voice as lyrical and achingly passionate as the sambas she writes. She reveals early on that Graça died young, but not how, and the mystery suffuses her tale with longing. Through her wise observations, readers experience their music at every stage: its intimate creation, the showy on-stage performances, and the informal rodas, where their group plays just for themselves. The novel is an intoxicating performance itself, not to be missed by anyone wanting to be wrapped up in a well-told story.
The Air You Breathe was published yesterday in hardcover by Riverhead; I wrote this review for August's Historical Novels Review. Reading it over now, I did gush a bit! It's one of my five-star reads for the year. Peebles has an earlier novel (2008), The Seamstress, also set in Brazil during the same period, and which I haven't read yet, but it's moved up much further on the TBR pile.
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