Rating: 
Summary: Boring and unrealistic
Review: As a brazilian, I can say that John Updike portraited Brazil the country far from the reality, mainly because he obviously does not have the knowledge of the culture and places he mentions in the book. His characters are stiff and frigid, and most of them, specially for coming from poverty, would never say what John writes as their dialogues.People from the slums discussing marxism, capitalism and socialism? Those people are way too busy trying to survive. They do not have the education (or strenght, for the lack of food) to discuss those issues. Porno movies at the hotel TV in the 60's? VCR's did not get to Brazil until the 80's, color TV's not until the mid 70's. Two brothers long missing encountering accidently, bumping into each other, in Sao Paulo, after one day Tristao had been looking for his brother??? Sao Paulo has 20 million people! The character's names are unreal, even the ones that do not relate to Tristan and Isolde -- old names from the monarchy times, nearly 200 years ago, from Portuguese inheritance in Brazil, that people do not use to name their kids anymore, or even know about those names. Don't waste your time and money on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Romance in Black & White
Review: Boy spots Girl on the hot December sands of the Copacabana. "An angel or a whore?" Boy wonders aloud. Boy meets Girl. Poor meets Rich. Ebony meets Ivory. Ivory Tower meets the Slums. Sparks fly. More sparks fly. The pyrotechnics create a world that defies definition, culminating in a role reversal of sorts. That, in essence, sums up this novel. That is the most I can divulge without giving away the "plot". Updike tries his hand at magical realism here. Unfortunately, he errs on the side of magic, relying too heavily on fantastic occurrences to further his story. The richness of Updike's imagery doesn't come from his description of the mundane. On the contrary, the images he draws are intrinsically so spectacular, so fantastic, that he doesn't have to work hard to make them "look" spectacular. There's nothing wrong with that, only it gets bland after a while. And magic is not supposed to get bland. Updike's solution to blandness is libido. Coital decsriptions, sexual roleplay, and an occasional kinky misadventure punctuate the story. Again, nothing wrong with that. Only it's such an easy solution. Despite the weak plot and overreliance on magic, the author holds on to his elegant style. It's important to remember that Updike is essentially a poet. This book is a poet's experiment to tread the unknown, to dish out a strange concoction, and watch the guinea pig react. On a sunny day, go to the beach, put on some sunscreen, read this novel and get it over with. You might enjoy it that way. Don't forget to wash off the sunscreen, and forget the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good
Review: Brazil is the interracial love story of Isabel and Tristao. Isabel is white and Tristao is black. The two have to run out of town to get away from Isabel's very powerful father. Their lovestory is very freaky, they try some of everything in their relationship. Isabel does finds someone that does a spell and make her black and Tristo white, so he can be treated better by whites. The story goes through twenty two years starting in the mid sixties. Most of the action takes place in Brazil. The book gives you a look at interracial love in another country.
Rating:
Summary: Boring and unrealistic
Review: Brazil tells the predictable story of Tristao and Isabel, the ill-fated lovers, and John Updike is an able writer with clean and polished prose. Unfortunately the book is full of quite a lot of nonsense, including some very poor dialogue, and combined with the hard-nose realistic style, the end result is rather frigid. But my chief complaint is this: When someone calls his book 'Brazil' it should be safe to assume that the author has something important and truthful to say about the country. Updike's Brazil is stale and stereotypical, and none of the characters are even remotely believable as Brazilians. He misses the most important point about Brazil althogether: Its people are warm, caring, both passionate and compassionate. None of this comes through. This book is really not worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Updike goes to Brazil
Review: Combined factual and mythological account of life in Brazil, from the standpoint of a favela boy and his rich rebellious, sexual girlfriend, and their consequent hopeless flight from racism and class. The book gives us the real flavor of Brazil, which compensates for the use of magic in the plot. The magic is used to emphasize the racism. The racism of Brazil differs from that of the U.S., Europe, Afghanistan and other middle eastern countries, in that mixing has far more prevalent there, first of the Portugese with the Indians and later with the Africans. In spite of that, the black underclass lives in the most abject, dangerous, poverty imaginable (are the lives of Hazaras in Afghanistan in any way comparable?). I will not forget the view from Impanema Beach of an attractive populated mountainside in the distance. In Europe or the U.S. the rich would now occupy such territory. It was a favela, and the sewage from all favelas runs untreated into the water. You cannot swim in the ocean, so 'normal' people simply promenade and sunbath on the beach, where boys from the favela sell roasted cornears and sodapop, and occaisonally swim, out of ignorance, in the water. Nights in summer without A/C are unbearable, one cannot possibly sleep. So the street along Impanema and Copacabana are alive with walkers, joggers, skaters and prostitutes at 1 AM. The hospitality of the Brazilean people is great, the brutality of their police is seen in the faces of the policemen, and the hopelesness of the favela dwellers is surely without bound. The houses of the rich and middleclass border right on the favelas, and are separated from them by stone fences with broken glass imbedded on top. Nevertheless, if you walk up the stairway leading into a favela you will see graffitti on the walls of those houses, a sign that broken glass is not enough to keep the poor out (I kept my camera under my shirt to make stealing it harder). And as a white, you will risk your life if you walk further upward. This is what I mean when I write that the book "Brazil" gives an accurate sense of place.
Rating:
Summary: Occasionally Interesting but Predictable
Review: Everyone knows and loves Updike. His own worst enemy is himself. In choosing to set his "Tristan and Isolde" love story in Brazil, the author has overextended himself. He simply doesn't know enough about Brazil, doesn't have that visceral sense of the country that would make this book a success. As a result, the characters often explain things at length in their dialogue that any Brazilian already knows. Thus, while the author strives for a sort of magical realist effect in fantastical dialogue and plotting, the words that come out of the characters' mouths are things that no Brazilian would ever say. Case in point: the poor favela-dwellers speak some bizarre inner-city U.S. ghetto lingo that just makes no sense in a Brazilian context. The plot is straightforward and linear, black/white, racial tension. Nothing new there. The denouement is utterly predictable. When his own attention lags, the author tosses in a gratuitous sex scene. The sex, ostensibly designed to demonstrate the fiery heat of the lovers' passion, is a strange blend of tawdry and clinically kinky... it carries no heat. And frankly, by the twentieth sex scene, a reader can be forgiven for skipping ahead a few paragraphs to pick up the story again. Despite the occasional pithy gem, ("Women and men occupy two different realms, and their mating is like the moment when a bird seizes a fish"), the regular attempts to stir in some profundity generally dissolve into mere banality. This is not a deep book, it was not carefully thought-through. It is just a linear tale. Even Updike is getting a little bored by the end, as he completes one of the final chapters: "Though this chapter covers the greatest stretch of time, let it be no longer than it is!" Bleary-eyed readers will agree with this sentiment.
Rating:
Summary: Occasionally Interesting but Predictable
Review: Everyone knows and loves Updike. His own worst enemy is himself. In choosing to set his "Tristan and Isolde" love story in Brazil, the author has overextended himself. He simply doesn't know enough about Brazil, doesn't have that visceral sense of the country that would make this book a success. As a result, the characters often explain things at length in their dialogue that any Brazilian already knows. Thus, while the author strives for a sort of magical realist effect in fantastical dialogue and plotting, the words that come out of the characters' mouths are things that no Brazilian would ever say. Case in point: the poor favela-dwellers speak some bizarre inner-city U.S. ghetto lingo that just makes no sense in a Brazilian context. The plot is straightforward and linear, black/white, racial tension. Nothing new there. The denouement is utterly predictable. When his own attention lags, the author tosses in a gratuitous sex scene. The sex, ostensibly designed to demonstrate the fiery heat of the lovers' passion, is a strange blend of tawdry and clinically kinky... it carries no heat. And frankly, by the twentieth sex scene, a reader can be forgiven for skipping ahead a few paragraphs to pick up the story again. Despite the occasional pithy gem, ("Women and men occupy two different realms, and their mating is like the moment when a bird seizes a fish"), the regular attempts to stir in some profundity generally dissolve into mere banality. This is not a deep book, it was not carefully thought-through. It is just a linear tale. Even Updike is getting a little bored by the end, as he completes one of the final chapters: "Though this chapter covers the greatest stretch of time, let it be no longer than it is!" Bleary-eyed readers will agree with this sentiment.
Rating:
Summary: love lasts, but at what price?
Review: This book disturbed some of my notions of love. Mr. Updike certainly has written a very engrossing love story. The theme of love is what captivated me the most. Others may not like this. As a writer and poet, Updike writes brillaint prose, and he keeps the book's characters enticing throughout. Do I sense a certain sense of cynicism from the author on love? Read and judge for yourself! The Brazilian images are memorable. The book has many memorable lines. The ending is tragic and expected. What love story ever ends in eternal bliss? Is love a thing above physical attraction? The future is what we make of it or how others make it for us? I might come back to this book and see if it is worth a second read. I will certainly read another Updike novel: kinda of looking forward to it actually!
Rating: 
Summary: Artificial
Review: This book evokes wonderful images of the nature and culture of Brazil but the story it tells, of the instantaneous romance between a black slum dweller and a rich white girl is trite and unrealistic. Updike often tried to hard to show his knowledge about Brazil and its history while neglecting to move the story forward. A final effort at in-depth thought comes too late to redeem the many artificial qualities of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Off beat
Review: This is an unusual novel by Updike, as it is not set in his usual territory of middle-class America. Instead, the scene is Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s. Two young people, Tristão and Isabel, meet on a beach and become lovers. Thereafter, the action takes them and the reader on a Brazilian odyssey - Rio, São Paulo, Brasilia and the Amazon hinterland are all covered as the lovers' relationship fluctuates and develops. I thought that this was more of a fantasy than a serious and insightful novel about Brazil, and that it fell seriously short in quality when compared to some of Updike's more accomplished works. I was not convinced that Updike had good first-hand knowledge of the country, rather I felt that his knowledge might have been based on others' accounts. Perhaps realism was not the aim, but I couldn't get away from the "artificial" feel of the narrative - a fault Updike is not normally guilty of, although there are precedents ("The Coup"). At best, "Brazil" felt like a condensed version of one of James A Michener's sweeping historical novels, with sex added. Airport lounge reading only. G Rodgers
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