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Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent work.
Review: I just loved this book. It's deep,it's tragic, it's moving but it also has great humor.
It tells the story of the downfall of an upper class family following the leftist revolution that took Portugal by storm in 1974. It's told by several people, all inter-related,like João, the helpless son of a powerful, arrogant land owner, close to the high ranks of Government, who now lays dying in a hospital bed, João's wife, Sofia and her very rich family, the cook ,the father's former secretary and mistress,etc.
Thus a very rich portrait of the Portuguese political and social scene of the pre-revolution days emerges, with dictator Salazar reigning supreme.
The characters are very powerful.Some you hate, like the father, some you really feel for, like João. He reminded me of the character named Balthasar in «TheBeastly Beatitudes of Balthasar B.» by J.P. Donleavy. Has the same kind of vulnerability.
This is my favorite book by Antonio Lobo Antunes. He really knows how to tackle all this powerful stuff, like love and hate and incest and rape. Still he manages to make you laugh, sometimes. And cry too.
Rating: 
Summary: This isn't a bad book, but
Review: I thought this book had a great deal of potential. The subject matter was bleak, yet it had purpose. Stream of consciousness can be quite enlightening when done right. Unfortunetly, I could not get involved in this book. Perhaps it was because it is a translation, but I don't know. There were certain passages that were quite lyrical, while others left me totally lost. Perhaps one day I will try this book again.
Rating:
Summary: This isn't a bad book, but
Review: I thought this book had a great deal of potential. The subject matter was bleak, yet it had purpose. Stream of consciousness can be quite enlightening when done right. Unfortunetly, I could not get involved in this book. Perhaps it was because it is a translation, but I don't know. There were certain passages that were quite lyrical, while others left me totally lost. Perhaps one day I will try this book again.
Rating:
Summary: A Readable Consciousness Novel
Review: Most reputable journals have already reviewed this novel favorably, and inside these reviews most have mentioned its author as the perennial Nobel prize contender.Presumably, then, there is no need to defend the novel's literary merits. Instead, I will focus on why I love this novel: Besides the torrential prose that bends itself on the page like the best of Woolf, and besides the summation of consciousnesses that together trap the aftermath of a dictatorship like no plot-based narrative could, this novel surprises the reader by accomplishing what most time-shifting consciousness novels have never offered us: readability. The energy of the prose is such that we are fast moving between disparate places in time, but through repetition Antunes creates place holders in the readers' mind, such that you end up with a paragraph like: "Don't kiss me"
"Open you mouth, you bugger, thanks to you I'll miss the five o'clock bus, Jesus.."
"Don't cry Francisco, please don't cry, it's useless to cry"
the elm trees on the square of Palmela, the melancholy Major spreading wide his dismayed hands
"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do, official instructions from the Prime Minister, we can't antagonize supporters.." Confusing, yes, but only if we had not heard those phrases over and over before. In the aforementioned paragraph, the character's consciousness wanders to three different time periods, and yet the reader seamlessly jumps time along with the character's mind because phrases like "don't kiss me" have already being repeated in fully developed scenes. Since this' an Amazon review I do not have to end with a summarizing literary sound-bity sentence. Ack. Oh, and if you love Saramago and Marquez's "Autumn of the Patriarch," you'll love Antunes.
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