Rating: 
Summary: Intersting and satisfying read
Review: From the opening pages, with the luscious descriptions of Ilheus, through to the end, Amado's book held me captivated. The exotic setting for American readers provides an interesting backdrop and the impliicit theme of modernization gives the story yet another facet. This book is a light and fanciful summer read that I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: MY DAUGHTER'S MIDDLE NAME IS GABRIELA BECAUSE OF THIS BOOK
Review: Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon is Brazilian Nobel Laureate Jorge Amado's masterpiece. When it was made into a TV movie in Brazil, the entire country -- including the government--- stopped to watch. I read Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon for the first time 20 years ago, with the result noted in the headline above. Gabriela... is a spell-binding romance and tale of frontier life in Brazil. In 1925, the town of Ilheus burst into prosperity & modernity as cacao plantations gobbled up the land. Cacao barons built nouveau riche monstrosities and cultivated fine airs. And the mulatto girl, Gabriela, filthy, starving and dressed in rags, wandered into town with a stream of others escaping famine. Just as Nacib the Arab loses his cook. What would his Cafe do with no cook? They find each other. Gabriela, bathed and clothed, is a beauty who has every man in town panting. Also-- she's a great cook. Soon, the Cafe is hopping and Nacib is a mess. Can he hold on to her? A melange of political bosses, concubines, proper wives and daughters. Cheating wives and scandal. Boredom in the heat. And the beautiful Gabriela and her food moving through it like a smile. When I read this book 20 years ago, I loved it as a romance. My recent reading impressed me as a woman's book. Amado draws the lives and options of women in Brazilian society at this time very clearly, and shows how one resourceful woman managed to be herself. The book has the flowery language of Latin writing. It's author is older-- I believe that he died not too long ago. So it feels a bit antique. And very exotic.
Rating:
Summary: Bountiful! A masterpiece!
Review: Gabriela, Cloves Cinnamon is simply bountiful. I bought this book in anticipation of a business trip to Brazil, and found that it was a wonderful story rich with political intrigue, well developed characters and a lush setting that served my initial purpose - as a microcosm through which to gain a little insight into the Brazilian psyche. It is a literary masterpiece with a strong prose / narrative style that prevents it being too 'heavy' a read. It total avoids trite characterizations and predictability in the plot. I am going to follow-up this with reading other of Jorge Amado's work, and buy the movie based upon "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" for their own literary value, as opposed to simply as examples of Brazilian / Latin American literature / film.
Rating:
Summary: Love in the time of change
Review: Hidden behind a fabulous love story, this book contains an acute and profound analysis of social change: what progress, prosperity and civilization do to mores, habits and the way people see the world. Ilheus (look up the pictures in the internet, the place is very beautiful) is a small city on the coast of Brazil, between Bahia and Rio. The cacao crop is making many of the people in Ilheus richer and richer, and so new people come from different parts of Brazil and other countries, to find work and share the prosperity. The city and its surroundings have a history of violence and bloodshed, due to the bitter fights to get the best lands and control production and trade. The conquerors of these lands are called "colonels", the old barons, strongmen used to resolving disputes at gunpoint. "Democracy" is understood as having the same puppets winning all the time, assuring political control for the bosses. One should note that these guys are not simply crooks and killers. They are extremely audacious and brave people who used to have a point in behaving the way they did.
But times are changing. From Rio has come a man called Mundinho Falcao, a young, entrepreneurial, modern kind of man, who has brought new ideas and habits (like bathing in the sea). Ilheus has a problem: the entrance to the port is blocked by a sand barrier, which makes it impossible for big boats to get in, and so most of the revenue from the cacao trade goes to Bahia's capital. Mundinho, a man with strong political connections, is pushing for the beginning of works to remove this obstacle and bring more money to the town. This, of course, is a threat to the colonels' control of politics, and Mundinho is an ambitious man.
Meanwhile, there is this guy Nacib, a man from Syrian descent, who owns the most popular bar in Ilheus. On the day the novel begins, old habits make a big shock in the town's life, as everybody wakes up to learn that colonel Jesuino has discovered in bed his wife and a dentist, and he has shot them both to dead, as a man should do (at least in Ilheus). But Nacib has other things to worry about, for his cook has left for good, on the eve of an important meal he has to serve. After many tribulations, Nacib goes to the "slave market", the place where destitute people from the poor inlands come to look for work. He finds Gabriela, a filthy young woman who says she can cook. After bathing, Gabriela turns out to be an extremely beautiful and sexy girl who becomes the object of desire for every man in town, and her cooking makes for big success at the bar. In order to keep her, and after falling madly in love with her, Nacib decides to marry her. The development of their love is very interesting, erotic and entertaining, and at some point it will become a new symbol of new habits and social mores.
The novel examines, through stories and things that happen in the town, many aspects of societal change, how progress affects old interests and brings about some violence, the kind of violence that signals the withering of the old regime and the arrival of new ways to do things, from politics to falling in love to dealing with infidelity.
Don't waste any more time: this is a gorgeous novel, full of humor, erotism, violence and politics. Characters are extremely well developed, all of them reminding the reader of people he/she has met in real life, especially if one has lived in a small city.
Plus it is very exotic, with a wildly tropical scenery. Amado is a great writer with many things to say and people to invent.
Rating:
Summary: Simply extraordinary.
Review: Historicaly situated at the late 1920's in Brazil, this masterpiece tells a story about the paradox among ingenuity and passion. From all points of view, this perfectly structured argument, lines up love, prejudice and social evolution, using the obsession for progress - sign of those times - as a key to develop the principal love argument of the book with such an extaordinary narrative and descriptive manners, that you could feel the essence of the city, or even recreate its architectural and urban display. This is the kind of books that makes you think "how comes I never read it in high school" but thankfully it is never late to enjoy a book like this.
Rating:
Summary: Simply extraordinary.
Review: Historicaly situated at the late 1920's in Brazil, this masterpiece tells a story about the paradox among ingenuity and passion. From all points of view, this perfectly structured argument, lines up love, prejudice and social evolution, using the obsession for progress - sign of those times - as a key to develop the principal love argument of the book with such an extaordinary narrative and descriptive manners, that you could feel the essence of the city, or even recreate its architectural and urban display. This is the kind of books that makes you think "how comes I never read it in high school" but thankfully it is never late to enjoy a book like this.
Rating:
Summary: A 'must read' if you going to Brazil!
Review: I think that should be the title of this book (and all of the other Amado books I have read). While the story becomes interesting after a while, I get bored reading about how beautiful the women of Bahia are (although, it's true they are!). The beginning of the book is full of descriptions of old men and young beautiful women, which as a women is not only boring in such quantities, but also unappealing. It may be a little difficult for some women to laugh off, the way the author does, the social inequities of women that occurred at that time. That being said, the story does pick up after Gabriella comes into her own. After the first 1/3 of the book, I couldn't put it down - Gabriella is a great character! She'll make it worth reading Amado's sometimes borish descriptors.
Rating: 
Summary: I like women
Review: I think that should be the title of this book (and all of the other Amado books I have read). While the story becomes interesting after a while, I get bored reading about how beautiful the women of Bahia are (although, it's true they are!). The beginning of the book is full of descriptions of old men and young beautiful women, which as a women is not only boring in such quantities, but also unappealing. It may be a little difficult for some women to laugh off, the way the author does, the social inequities of women that occurred at that time. That being said, the story does pick up after Gabriella comes into her own. After the first 1/3 of the book, I couldn't put it down - Gabriella is a great character! She'll make it worth reading Amado's sometimes borish descriptors.
Rating: 
Summary: Exotic and untranslatable
Review: In Portuguese this book is funny and sentimental. In English it becomes absurdly exotic, LEARN PORTUGUESE AND READ IT PROPERLY
Rating:
Summary: Amado Hits a Strong Note
Review: In the past year, I've read a lot of South American literature. 6 books to be exact, and supposedly some of the 6 best South America has to offer. Some of them were good, others ok, and two in particular were very good. This book is second only to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I must say is my favorite book of all time, and I think I may have liked it more had I not read One Hundred Years... but regardless, Amado is incredibly witty, smart and has a very strong ability to create characters that matter to the reader.
He seems to underestimate the wits of the reader though, making some of his metaphors that were very subtle and brilliant, very apparent the more the novel goes on, and eventually pretty much unvailing to the reader that the metaphors were actually what they were perceived to be all along. Nonetheless, Amado definentely has a mastering of Dramedies, or the Drama/Comedy, and he blends a myriad of loveable characters and themes of progress into a enjoyable romp.
Sharing many themes apparant in South American Literature, it is much less dark than that of some other South American writers and actually has some moments that I put down the book to laugh.
All in All, Amado has a very strong outing with Gabriela, and sadly the rating system doesn't include a 4.5 star rating as this is right there, but lacks just slightly enough to be consider a classic.
Do not hesitate to pick up this book, it's worth every penny and can make an excellent in-flight read as well (that's what I did over 2 flights)
|
