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Feast Days
A New York Times Editors' Pick
"Devastating, funny and wise, it's among the best novels I know about the fate of American innocence abroad."--Garth Greenwell
Intelligent and deeply felt, Feast Days follows a young wife who relocates with her financier husband to São Paulo--a South American megacity that impresses and unsettles, conceals and erupts. Here in her new home, she reckons with the twenty-first century as she encounters crime, protests, refugees gentrification, and the collision of art and commerce, while confronting the crisis slowly building inside her own marriage.
In stylish prose and with piercing wit, Ian MacKenzie tells the story of Emma, a young woman who has moved from New York to Brazil just as massive demonstrations against the government are breaking out across the country amid growing economic inequality. Emma has come to Brazil for her husband's career, with no job prospects of her own, a weak grasp of the language, and a deep ambivalence about having a child. Her early days in Sao Paulo are listless but privileged; she dines at high-end restaurants, tutors wealthy Brazilians in English, and observes the city she now calls home.
But when Emma volunteers at a local church to assist refugees and grows more deeply connected to the people she meets in the course of her days, she finds herself unable to resist the tug of Sao Paulo's political and social unrest.
As the country moves seemingly closer to a breaking point, so does Emma's marriage, as she and her husband can no longer ignore the silent, tectonic shifts beneath the surface of their relationship.
Feast Days is a sharply observed story of expatriate life, as well as a meditation on the hidden costs of modern living and how easily our belief systems can collapse around us.
"Devastating, funny and wise, it's among the best novels I know about the fate of American innocence abroad."--Garth Greenwell
Intelligent and deeply felt, Feast Days follows a young wife who relocates with her financier husband to São Paulo--a South American megacity that impresses and unsettles, conceals and erupts. Here in her new home, she reckons with the twenty-first century as she encounters crime, protests, refugees gentrification, and the collision of art and commerce, while confronting the crisis slowly building inside her own marriage.
In stylish prose and with piercing wit, Ian MacKenzie tells the story of Emma, a young woman who has moved from New York to Brazil just as massive demonstrations against the government are breaking out across the country amid growing economic inequality. Emma has come to Brazil for her husband's career, with no job prospects of her own, a weak grasp of the language, and a deep ambivalence about having a child. Her early days in Sao Paulo are listless but privileged; she dines at high-end restaurants, tutors wealthy Brazilians in English, and observes the city she now calls home.
But when Emma volunteers at a local church to assist refugees and grows more deeply connected to the people she meets in the course of her days, she finds herself unable to resist the tug of Sao Paulo's political and social unrest.
As the country moves seemingly closer to a breaking point, so does Emma's marriage, as she and her husband can no longer ignore the silent, tectonic shifts beneath the surface of their relationship.
Feast Days is a sharply observed story of expatriate life, as well as a meditation on the hidden costs of modern living and how easily our belief systems can collapse around us.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2018
20 people are currently reading
992 people want to read
About the author
Ian MacKenzie
3 books15 followersIan MacKenzie is the author of the novel FEAST DAYS, forthcoming in March 2018 from Little, Brown, as well as a previous novel, CITY OF STRANGERS. His fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College, and has lived in New York City, Ethiopia, and Brazil. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
December 11, 2024
I should have been deprived, because of who I was and what I wanted, because of what I could and could not do. Could: write a coherent sentence, handle a first-declension Latin noun (e.g. latibricola, latebricolae--"one who lives in hiding"). Could not: conduct a regression analysis, code in Java or Python, handle tools, afford health insurance.
Sound like a lot of people I know here on GR.
And here we have another book that, at least at first, would seem familiar to fans of Mona Awad, Miranda July, Bea Sutten and Otessa Moshfgh, featuring a woman falling to pieces and providing us constant updates on the process. But Emma, whose name we finally learn almost by accident nearly 200 pages in, turns out to have more in common with Faye, the nearly-hidden protagonist of several Rachel Cusk novels. Faye's nature is revealed to us slowly, mostly by witnessing reactions of other people to her, while Emma starts sharing her thoughts with us on page 1 and does not pause until the last sentence of the book. All but sixteen pages of this book consist of single paragraphs, separated on the page, each containing one of her thoughts. The sixteen-page exception, near the end, describe a rush of feelings as her world closes in on her and she's forced to make some long-deferred decisions.
The book did not end the way I was expecting and did not follow the most obvious paths out of Emma’s particular forest. I haven’t often found fiction this sharply written and observant. I recommend this to people who want to meet and alternately enjoy life and suffer with an interesting companion.
Here’s a tip, from my stint as a single woman in New York: if you’re going to flirt with someone reading a book by herself, you’d better be ready to talk about the book. She’ll be less than impressed if you ask her what she’s reading and then stare like an idiot when she says Coetzee.
Heck, even I knew that.
November 10, 2018
Precarity in action:
The female narrator is the ‘trailing spouse’ of an American investment banker relocated to Brazil for his job. With no work permit of her own and finding herself at a loose end, Emma becomes a detached social observer, mixing with other privileged women-who-lunch, and - overcome with a demoralising lack of purpose - also faces a marriage under stress.
Against a background of civil unrest, inter-racial and class conflict, this privileged ex-pat life in ‘gleaming and decrepit’ São Paulo is vividly contrasted with the plight of the city’s socially-marginalised population, holding up a dystopian mirror to failing neoliberal economic systems around the world.
Mackenzie has written an impressive and thought-provoking examination of the disconnect between liberal empathy and the real engagement needed to address the status quo.
The female narrator is the ‘trailing spouse’ of an American investment banker relocated to Brazil for his job. With no work permit of her own and finding herself at a loose end, Emma becomes a detached social observer, mixing with other privileged women-who-lunch, and - overcome with a demoralising lack of purpose - also faces a marriage under stress.
Against a background of civil unrest, inter-racial and class conflict, this privileged ex-pat life in ‘gleaming and decrepit’ São Paulo is vividly contrasted with the plight of the city’s socially-marginalised population, holding up a dystopian mirror to failing neoliberal economic systems around the world.
Mackenzie has written an impressive and thought-provoking examination of the disconnect between liberal empathy and the real engagement needed to address the status quo.
September 7, 2018
Firstly, MacKenzie's act of ventriloquism in voicing this through a young, married American woman is pitch-perfect: there's no gender dissonance that I felt at all. That said, this is a hard book to pin down: it's sharp, it's observant, it makes use of the trope of the 'outsider' to explore not just the place where our narrator and her husband are - Brazil - but also the place where they have come from: contemporary urban America.
With acute descriptions of social and economic inequalities, of protests and riots in the streets, of racial integration and immigration ('émigré - you only ever hear that term used in reference to the kind of refugee who has a violin case among his baggage; it has a connotation of nobility salvaged from disaster') this is our world filtered through a thoughtful intelligence.
As well as the public side of politics, MacKenzie explores the personal: marriage and gender roles are up for dissection, the privilege and prerogatives that comes from being the one who earns the money, the shifting tides of power within marriage.
This is a slender book where it's helpful to let go of expectations of a linear narrative: there is no real beginning, middle or end (though the book isn't shapeless): a searching, compelling story or collection of stories - and an interesting writer to watch.
Thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley
With acute descriptions of social and economic inequalities, of protests and riots in the streets, of racial integration and immigration ('émigré - you only ever hear that term used in reference to the kind of refugee who has a violin case among his baggage; it has a connotation of nobility salvaged from disaster') this is our world filtered through a thoughtful intelligence.
As well as the public side of politics, MacKenzie explores the personal: marriage and gender roles are up for dissection, the privilege and prerogatives that comes from being the one who earns the money, the shifting tides of power within marriage.
This is a slender book where it's helpful to let go of expectations of a linear narrative: there is no real beginning, middle or end (though the book isn't shapeless): a searching, compelling story or collection of stories - and an interesting writer to watch.
Thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley
June 16, 2019
Ouch! Watch out for the sharp edges! This book cuts expat wives’ lives to the bone - I can’t say it is inaccurate, but it holds a magnifying glass up to all the worst parts of this life. Although I am an expat wife in Singapore there is a universality to the experience and the cast of this book are at once familiar, and very disconcerting. The idea of a group of aimless women who only exist to have boozy lunches and breed spoilt children for their dodgy-dealing banker husbands is, in some respects, right on the money. But is it also a complete cliché? Again, my own experience says that’s a tired trope, trotted out to show non-expats what a feckless bunch of rich layabouts we have become. And yet, some ugly truth remains... I’m utterly conflicted by this book as some of the writing is wonderful, stark and uncluttered, conveying almost a sense of dread, of boredom, of a life light that is wasting way in a gilded cage. Honestly, I’m glad it was such a short book, I couldn’t stand much more!
May 25, 2018
Fiction and media pieces on contemporary Brazil are all too prone to focusing mostly on the social inequalities that plague this country. This funny novel, written in witty and extremely well-crafted prose, is not always beyond this temptation. It is easy to understand that the constant contrast between immense wealth and abject poverty may catch the eye of a foreigner who comes from more egalitarian societies; nevertheless, a considerable part (although not the majority) of the Brazilian population is middle class - you know, the people like you and me, who pay for their yearly cultural trip to Europe on 6 installments - and the ways of these people's lives, whose contingent is roughly the same as the whole population of some Europe countries, don't often call the attention of contemporary writers or analysts.
Maybe the term "rich" is behind much of what sounds puzzling about this novel for a Brazilian reader. Emma is said to circle among the Brazilian rich, but the word refers to people that we wouldn't take for rich at all. Maybe it has to do with the American quantitative approach to social class. Americans seem to consider basically the average income; everyone who falls below it is poor, everyone who is above it is rich, and the people who are in the middle of the curve are said to be the middle class. Brazilians consider it on more qualitative terms. Take Claudia, for instance. She is a medical doctor in a top-notch hospital in São Paulo; her son studies for the admission tests at a public university. Her income is surely way above the national average. Yet I wouldn't think of her as rich. If she stops working (if she is fired from the hospital, if she is injured) or if her son never makes it into a prestigious university, her family's social condition may be in decline. She may be moneyed, but she is dependent on her work in a way that I can't see real money in big finance or industry or the media ever being. The rich set the conditions much more than they are dependent on them. Brilliant as she may be, Claudia is only one of those Upper Middle Class successful professionals who serve them.
Notwithstanding these rather ill-humoured remarks, I must say that this is a highly entertaining novel with a fine sense of social observation and satyre. The scene where a children's party of the "rich" is compared to a Versailles ceremony is a piece of anthology. The French businessman who buys a cultural center in São Paulo in order to "sell creativity" is also hilarious.
"Feast Days" features not only a recent and precise likeness of contemporary Brazil, but also of American expats. Anglophone literature is fertile in stories on narrow-minded English or Americans who experience an interior awakening in the contact with the flamboyant and rather chaotic Latin Catholic cultures, either in the Mediterranean or in South America. Nothing as such ever happens here. Emma's marriage is crumbling down, but it could be crumbling down also in Malmo or in New Delhi. She goes through some of the main events in Brazil's very recent history, and yet it is as if she took solely an intellectual or romanesque interest into them, not a personal one. She often behaves like an unengaged observer. We are far from those early XXth century characters who question their whole lives in the contact with "exotic", "untrustworthy" and "primitive" Latins such as Italians or the Spanish.
What could this lack of response say about Americans abroad in the early 21th century? Was there a "closing of the American mind"? Is it that São Paulo (and Brazil), contrarily to Europe and just like the USA, is so cut off from the vivifying energies of the past, so immersed in an all-encompassing present, that it doesn't have much to teach these Americans - differently from, let's say, Italy's old cities in Forster's novels? Or rather is it that Brazilian current social stratification, frivolity and anti-intellectualism offer Emma and her husband a magnified image of the ills that she knows all too well back home? (Maybe this is why Emma expresses a sense of guilt for being an intellectual in American society, where "useless" interests are often considered almost solely as the shortest path to unemployment. Brazil wouldn't bring much of a change under this point of view…).
The opening of the novel hints at this last interpretation: the perception that, despite their apparent and radical differences, these two giants of the Americas that are Brazil and the US reflect each other in mirrored images. The narrator's main insight is that São Paulo is "a city that reminded you of what Americans used to think the future would look like - gleaming and decrepit at once". The dystopian view of São Paulo is half a precise depiction of contemporary Brazilian urban life (which applies to other big cities as well), half a fantasy dictated by the American anxieties of what their society might become someday. It is understandable. At the end of the day, isn't his fusion of the "gleaming" and the "decrepit", of Opera Houses and crackheads, a possibility for every global metropolis in not so distant a future?
Maybe the term "rich" is behind much of what sounds puzzling about this novel for a Brazilian reader. Emma is said to circle among the Brazilian rich, but the word refers to people that we wouldn't take for rich at all. Maybe it has to do with the American quantitative approach to social class. Americans seem to consider basically the average income; everyone who falls below it is poor, everyone who is above it is rich, and the people who are in the middle of the curve are said to be the middle class. Brazilians consider it on more qualitative terms. Take Claudia, for instance. She is a medical doctor in a top-notch hospital in São Paulo; her son studies for the admission tests at a public university. Her income is surely way above the national average. Yet I wouldn't think of her as rich. If she stops working (if she is fired from the hospital, if she is injured) or if her son never makes it into a prestigious university, her family's social condition may be in decline. She may be moneyed, but she is dependent on her work in a way that I can't see real money in big finance or industry or the media ever being. The rich set the conditions much more than they are dependent on them. Brilliant as she may be, Claudia is only one of those Upper Middle Class successful professionals who serve them.
Notwithstanding these rather ill-humoured remarks, I must say that this is a highly entertaining novel with a fine sense of social observation and satyre. The scene where a children's party of the "rich" is compared to a Versailles ceremony is a piece of anthology. The French businessman who buys a cultural center in São Paulo in order to "sell creativity" is also hilarious.
"Feast Days" features not only a recent and precise likeness of contemporary Brazil, but also of American expats. Anglophone literature is fertile in stories on narrow-minded English or Americans who experience an interior awakening in the contact with the flamboyant and rather chaotic Latin Catholic cultures, either in the Mediterranean or in South America. Nothing as such ever happens here. Emma's marriage is crumbling down, but it could be crumbling down also in Malmo or in New Delhi. She goes through some of the main events in Brazil's very recent history, and yet it is as if she took solely an intellectual or romanesque interest into them, not a personal one. She often behaves like an unengaged observer. We are far from those early XXth century characters who question their whole lives in the contact with "exotic", "untrustworthy" and "primitive" Latins such as Italians or the Spanish.
What could this lack of response say about Americans abroad in the early 21th century? Was there a "closing of the American mind"? Is it that São Paulo (and Brazil), contrarily to Europe and just like the USA, is so cut off from the vivifying energies of the past, so immersed in an all-encompassing present, that it doesn't have much to teach these Americans - differently from, let's say, Italy's old cities in Forster's novels? Or rather is it that Brazilian current social stratification, frivolity and anti-intellectualism offer Emma and her husband a magnified image of the ills that she knows all too well back home? (Maybe this is why Emma expresses a sense of guilt for being an intellectual in American society, where "useless" interests are often considered almost solely as the shortest path to unemployment. Brazil wouldn't bring much of a change under this point of view…).
The opening of the novel hints at this last interpretation: the perception that, despite their apparent and radical differences, these two giants of the Americas that are Brazil and the US reflect each other in mirrored images. The narrator's main insight is that São Paulo is "a city that reminded you of what Americans used to think the future would look like - gleaming and decrepit at once". The dystopian view of São Paulo is half a precise depiction of contemporary Brazilian urban life (which applies to other big cities as well), half a fantasy dictated by the American anxieties of what their society might become someday. It is understandable. At the end of the day, isn't his fusion of the "gleaming" and the "decrepit", of Opera Houses and crackheads, a possibility for every global metropolis in not so distant a future?
January 23, 2018
I received an ARC of this through a Giveaway on Goodreads.
Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this book very much. It's a short book, and moves along fairly quickly, and touches on a number of topics.
However, I felt like the main character was directionless and spineless, which made for a book about her hopping along to Brazil with her husband and then not really doing much for a whole lot of pages. There are brief interactions and situations that allow for certain topics to be discussed (finances, infidelity, marriage, poverty, politics). But in the end I felt like the whole book just fell flat, said nothing profound, and I walked away with little to remember this by.
Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this book very much. It's a short book, and moves along fairly quickly, and touches on a number of topics.
However, I felt like the main character was directionless and spineless, which made for a book about her hopping along to Brazil with her husband and then not really doing much for a whole lot of pages. There are brief interactions and situations that allow for certain topics to be discussed (finances, infidelity, marriage, poverty, politics). But in the end I felt like the whole book just fell flat, said nothing profound, and I walked away with little to remember this by.
March 20, 2018
Expat life -novel set in SÃO PAULO
3.75*
I was drawn to read this novel because the publicity stated: “So, we were Americans abroad. We weren’t the doomed travellers in a Paul Bowles novel (who incidentally features on our Pinterest Board of “Top Travel Books, ever?“), and we weren’t the idealists or the malarial, religion-damaged burnouts in something by Greene….” Sounded right up the TripFiction street!
Snapshots of expat life are brought together in this engaging, slim novel. The author has chosen an unusual construction, a scattergun of events, observations and social interchanges, all set in São Paulo, experienced through the lens of a nameless wife.
Her husband, an investment banker, has been sent to the city and she has tagged along, with a non-defined status – “a trailing spouse” – but having to make a life for herself. She teaches English, she volunteers at a church where Haitians assemble and as the days pass, her experiences are jotted down. Sometimes they are a mere paragraph, sometimes they are a longer clip.
Early on she and her husband get mugged, a common occurrence apparently – friends of theirs have already chalked up three muggings. She reflects on this and about her surroundings, as she watches the sun set over the city, planes dipping towards the airport. She looks back to the build-up of her marriage, she ponders the role of men and women and children, the function of society, language, and the demonstrations she was witnessing in the city on a very regular basis.
São Paulo is the background constant which links the random paragraphs. There is childlike joy when the protagonist discovers the crosswalk signals outside major buildings depict silhouettes of the building, instead of little walk/stop figures. Observing the old ladies walking their dogs, she learns that the city has the greatest number of dogs under ten kilos in the world and also the world’s largest population of crack addicts (who knew?). I don’t suppose the two are linked but in the marginal world of street level life, anything seems possible. Witchcraft, despite the power of the church, is prevalent, and just watch out for crossroads where voodoo is often practised.
So, a profusion of interesting facts and observations (not always relevant to the story) litter the narrative. It would be an excellent book for those who would like get under the skin of the city as seen by an outsider looking in. As a story, for me, it was a little too random and disjointed.That said, the author can write in a very engaging way!
3.75*
I was drawn to read this novel because the publicity stated: “So, we were Americans abroad. We weren’t the doomed travellers in a Paul Bowles novel (who incidentally features on our Pinterest Board of “Top Travel Books, ever?“), and we weren’t the idealists or the malarial, religion-damaged burnouts in something by Greene….” Sounded right up the TripFiction street!
Snapshots of expat life are brought together in this engaging, slim novel. The author has chosen an unusual construction, a scattergun of events, observations and social interchanges, all set in São Paulo, experienced through the lens of a nameless wife.
Her husband, an investment banker, has been sent to the city and she has tagged along, with a non-defined status – “a trailing spouse” – but having to make a life for herself. She teaches English, she volunteers at a church where Haitians assemble and as the days pass, her experiences are jotted down. Sometimes they are a mere paragraph, sometimes they are a longer clip.
Early on she and her husband get mugged, a common occurrence apparently – friends of theirs have already chalked up three muggings. She reflects on this and about her surroundings, as she watches the sun set over the city, planes dipping towards the airport. She looks back to the build-up of her marriage, she ponders the role of men and women and children, the function of society, language, and the demonstrations she was witnessing in the city on a very regular basis.
São Paulo is the background constant which links the random paragraphs. There is childlike joy when the protagonist discovers the crosswalk signals outside major buildings depict silhouettes of the building, instead of little walk/stop figures. Observing the old ladies walking their dogs, she learns that the city has the greatest number of dogs under ten kilos in the world and also the world’s largest population of crack addicts (who knew?). I don’t suppose the two are linked but in the marginal world of street level life, anything seems possible. Witchcraft, despite the power of the church, is prevalent, and just watch out for crossroads where voodoo is often practised.
So, a profusion of interesting facts and observations (not always relevant to the story) litter the narrative. It would be an excellent book for those who would like get under the skin of the city as seen by an outsider looking in. As a story, for me, it was a little too random and disjointed.That said, the author can write in a very engaging way!
May 18, 2018
A taut, extremely well-written novel about expats and refugees in today's São Paolo. The narrator, a young woman called Emma, has ended up in the Brazilian metropolis as a result of her marriage to a handsome banker. Although they are still in love with each other, cracks are starting to appear in the marriage because Emma doesn't want a family. Although she's been clear about it since the beginning, her husband has kept hoping she would change her mind, all the more so because she has no work visa for Brazil and is at a loose end. Instead, Emma gets gingerly involved with helping Haitian and Syrian refugees, and toys with the idea of an affair with her husband's colleague Marcos, who seems to be hitting on her. A highly educated woman with a passion for the English language, Emma is oddly slow at picking up Portuguese, which I find one of the most unconvincing elements of the story. The second puzzling element is that towards the end of the book, Emma seems to have fallen pregnant and to be fine with it, without her change of heart on the matter being explained. Still, MacKenzie provides a satisfyingly ambiguous ending with Emma's final words being her analysis of Rossellini's famous movie "Journey to Italy". According to her, "the need they feel for one another in that moment is plainly the consequence of panic in an unfamiliar place - the same foreign place that, for the entire film, they have blamed for exposing the flaws in their marriage. (...) Their embrace is merely the postponement of something difficult; or it is confirmation that the wife doesn't know how to escape a life of unhappiness." But this follows on one of Emma's strongest pronouncements: "A marriage is built on nothing so much as the story of that marriage." So what story has Emma decided is the story of her marriage, and why?
March 27, 2018
Written in a brutally honest tone, Feast Days recounts the story of Emma, a young woman who moves with her husband from New York to Brazil, where he works as a financial analyst. While protests rattle the country, Emma tries to find where she fits in, immersing herself in the arts scene, lunching with other expat wives and volunteering to help refugees who are fleeing poverty and war.
Feast Days (Little, Brown and Company, digital galley) is so honest at times it feels like reading a personal diary. As the county boils around her, threatening to break, so does her marriage, and Emma seems adrift and uncertain of her future.
This eloquent novel by Ian MacKenzie offers a look at the social layers of Brazil and expatriate life. It's a subtle examination of what constitutes a crisis versus what is simply the normal state of affairs.
Feast Days (Little, Brown and Company, digital galley) is so honest at times it feels like reading a personal diary. As the county boils around her, threatening to break, so does her marriage, and Emma seems adrift and uncertain of her future.
This eloquent novel by Ian MacKenzie offers a look at the social layers of Brazil and expatriate life. It's a subtle examination of what constitutes a crisis versus what is simply the normal state of affairs.
March 25, 2018
I can't help but silently weep that most of the pre-publication reviews for this completely miss the point.
What did you expect, a thriller?
Or because it's short you expected it to be a quick, easy read, contrary to the countless cover quotes?
Anyway, whatever.
THIS WAS STUNNING, STUNNING, STUNNING.
It opened so much inside, was so controlled and the themes were abundant, expertly orchestrated. Killer prose. Cutting remarks about how we live now. Effortlessly weaved observations of contemporary behaviours. Powerful voice. Utterly convincing. Easily one of the best things I've read this year.
Fuck the semi-colon for today.
4.29433
What did you expect, a thriller?
Or because it's short you expected it to be a quick, easy read, contrary to the countless cover quotes?
Anyway, whatever.
THIS WAS STUNNING, STUNNING, STUNNING.
It opened so much inside, was so controlled and the themes were abundant, expertly orchestrated. Killer prose. Cutting remarks about how we live now. Effortlessly weaved observations of contemporary behaviours. Powerful voice. Utterly convincing. Easily one of the best things I've read this year.
Fuck the semi-colon for today.
4.29433
January 20, 2018
Quite interesting story and full of many subjects - marriage, fidelity, money, race culture politics and many more. The story involves a wife who moves to Brazil when her husband is transferred there because of his job. A wonderful view of life there (both good and bad) is provided. The author has put so much feeling into life as she describes events. Very deep story involving so many aspects and issues. I highly recommend! I won this book in a GoodReads Giveaway.
June 9, 2019
Não tenho maiores informações a respeito do autor. Sei apenas que foi recomendado pelo João Pereira Coutinho, colunista do jornal A Folha de S. Paulo, como um exemplo de alguém que escreveu boa literatura a respeito do Brasil. E devo concordar com Coutinho.
Esse Feast days é realmente um tremendo livro para quem quer conhecer – e entender o Brasil do século XXI – ou pelo menos um certo Brasil que existiu nos primeiros – digamos – quinze anos deste século e que acabou quando o ciclo de prosperidade inchado artificialmente se esgotou, lá por volta de 2013.
A protagonista – Emma – é uma expatriada americana em São Paulo. O marido é um banqueiro de investimentos. Ela não tem um emprego fixo, mas dá aulas esporádicas de inglês para brasileiros. De um lado, ela tem contato com uma certa elite econômica – descrita cruamente – que tanto se beneficiou da bolha econômica quanto a criticou. De outro lado, ela vive uma cidade que tem desigualdades brutais: sofisticadíssima e ao mesmo tempo crudelíssima e vulgar; riquíssima e simultaneamente miserável e violenta.
O olhar estrangeiro resulta em algo profundamente assustador: é possível reconhecer o Brasil e os brasileiros no livro e ao mesmo tempo se assustar com esse país e essa elite que ele retrata. O olhar do autor é extremamente agudo nas suas observações e é possível perceber que ele conhece bastante o Brasil e o brasileiro e é, como todo autor que vale a pena ser lido, dono de uma percepção aguda do que está a sua volta.
Nem sempre é um livro fácil, porque ver toda a feiura (especialmente quando é a nossa própria) não é algo que desce bem, mas é realmente merecedor de ser lido.
Além disso, essa agudeza na crítica ele faz também aos seus próprios conterrâneos, como no momento em que ele descreve – em um flashback – o noivado de Emma com o marido.
Um livro curto, umas 240 páginas, mas que é arte de verdade.
Esse Feast days é realmente um tremendo livro para quem quer conhecer – e entender o Brasil do século XXI – ou pelo menos um certo Brasil que existiu nos primeiros – digamos – quinze anos deste século e que acabou quando o ciclo de prosperidade inchado artificialmente se esgotou, lá por volta de 2013.
A protagonista – Emma – é uma expatriada americana em São Paulo. O marido é um banqueiro de investimentos. Ela não tem um emprego fixo, mas dá aulas esporádicas de inglês para brasileiros. De um lado, ela tem contato com uma certa elite econômica – descrita cruamente – que tanto se beneficiou da bolha econômica quanto a criticou. De outro lado, ela vive uma cidade que tem desigualdades brutais: sofisticadíssima e ao mesmo tempo crudelíssima e vulgar; riquíssima e simultaneamente miserável e violenta.
O olhar estrangeiro resulta em algo profundamente assustador: é possível reconhecer o Brasil e os brasileiros no livro e ao mesmo tempo se assustar com esse país e essa elite que ele retrata. O olhar do autor é extremamente agudo nas suas observações e é possível perceber que ele conhece bastante o Brasil e o brasileiro e é, como todo autor que vale a pena ser lido, dono de uma percepção aguda do que está a sua volta.
Nem sempre é um livro fácil, porque ver toda a feiura (especialmente quando é a nossa própria) não é algo que desce bem, mas é realmente merecedor de ser lido.
Além disso, essa agudeza na crítica ele faz também aos seus próprios conterrâneos, como no momento em que ele descreve – em um flashback – o noivado de Emma com o marido.
Um livro curto, umas 240 páginas, mas que é arte de verdade.
June 5, 2018
This is the story of a young, New Yorker reading American woman, Emma, who has recently moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil following her Economist reading, "consistent" husband's lucrative job transfer there. The musings of the highly educated dilettante Emma on Brazilian society and expat life are the highlight of the book. The extreme inequalities in Brazil, the privilege of being a western expat, the privilege of being a native English speaker, encounters with desperate immigrants from among the world's poor- are all handled honesty. The plot is thin but there is a tension that builds throughout the book as one is in anticipation of some impending event that shakes up the perfect expat life. Emma had imagined that she could have a life "made of art". She didn't want to be an artist but believed she "could have the ancillary thing", and that the dependable, never gloomy banker husband with "a floor to his unhappiness" had a life she could "climb into". Perhaps Emma was too educated and too perceptive to maintain that illusion too long.
April 30, 2018
Feast Days is a trip to Sao Paulo through the mind of an upwardly mobile, young, American wife. The woman, who is pretty much unnamed throughout the book, and her like-unnamed husband relocate to the Brazilian city for his work. She is left rather bored without a job or a lot of friends to do things with. The couple dines out nightly in posh restaurants with other couples who are basically described like they are cardboard cut-outs (they aren't particularly likeable folks). It's a pretty stark for about the first quarter of the novel. Every evening is told through the perception of our observant wife-narrator. Slowly the landscape of the disparities between wealthy and poor is revealed.
She begins volunteering for a refugee assistance program. She begins working as an English tutor. She starts to get out a little more and interact with different people. Things get more interesting for the reader, too. The list of characters remains rather limited; however, if there were more people, I believe this story would somehow get bogged down. The simplicity of the plot allows our narrator to share intelligent, on-point observations about class, marriage, family, and Brazil.
I was slow to warm to this book; however, in the end I can say that it was a well-written, intelligent novel worth reading.
She begins volunteering for a refugee assistance program. She begins working as an English tutor. She starts to get out a little more and interact with different people. Things get more interesting for the reader, too. The list of characters remains rather limited; however, if there were more people, I believe this story would somehow get bogged down. The simplicity of the plot allows our narrator to share intelligent, on-point observations about class, marriage, family, and Brazil.
I was slow to warm to this book; however, in the end I can say that it was a well-written, intelligent novel worth reading.
June 10, 2018
Ian MacKenzie's 'Feast Days', a novel considerably outside my normal circle of genres, is a sort of trifling thing. If you're interested in following the travails of a couple young, affluent NYC-type ex-pats as they learn the ropes around Sao Paolo, Brazil by partying at nightclubs, dining at high end restaurants, and visiting art galleries while ruminating on poverty, it may well be up your alley.
Feast Days is largely a collection of episodes. Couple visits a bar, runs into man's co-worker. They talk about work. Couple gets mugged on way home, causing much discussion and thoughts about the nature and unfairness of wealth and absence of same. Woman gets interested in political riots taking place in the city. Man works late. Woman may or may not decide to have a baby. Woman may or may not decide to have an affair. Couple goes on vacation.... I'm quite sure there's a message buried in there somewhere, but I think you need to care about the characters enough to try to figure out what it is and, alas, I couldn't get there.
What I did enjoy, though, was MacKenzie's writing. It has a sort of DeLillo feel to it: mostly crisp, short sentences that create a staccato feel for the narrative. Thankfully, Feast Days is short, so although I liked the writing, the story was over quickly.
Feast Days is largely a collection of episodes. Couple visits a bar, runs into man's co-worker. They talk about work. Couple gets mugged on way home, causing much discussion and thoughts about the nature and unfairness of wealth and absence of same. Woman gets interested in political riots taking place in the city. Man works late. Woman may or may not decide to have a baby. Woman may or may not decide to have an affair. Couple goes on vacation.... I'm quite sure there's a message buried in there somewhere, but I think you need to care about the characters enough to try to figure out what it is and, alas, I couldn't get there.
What I did enjoy, though, was MacKenzie's writing. It has a sort of DeLillo feel to it: mostly crisp, short sentences that create a staccato feel for the narrative. Thankfully, Feast Days is short, so although I liked the writing, the story was over quickly.
March 15, 2018
I won an advance copy of this novel from the publisher, Little, Brown and Company.
3.5 stars Feast Days reads like a story told to you--in passing--amid the haze of a hot, sultry afternoon, with the oppressive weight of a difficult decision resting on your shoulders. Through the chaos of your mind, you get the gist of the story, but the details remain a little fuzzy. What I did enjoy about this book was the feeling of being dropped down into a foreign country--overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of my new surroundings. A friendly tip: read this one in ebook form so you can look up and/or translate any words or phrases you don't understand.
#popsugarreadingchallenge (prompt #17)
3.5 stars Feast Days reads like a story told to you--in passing--amid the haze of a hot, sultry afternoon, with the oppressive weight of a difficult decision resting on your shoulders. Through the chaos of your mind, you get the gist of the story, but the details remain a little fuzzy. What I did enjoy about this book was the feeling of being dropped down into a foreign country--overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of my new surroundings. A friendly tip: read this one in ebook form so you can look up and/or translate any words or phrases you don't understand.
#popsugarreadingchallenge (prompt #17)
August 28, 2018
Really excellent. An astonishingly realized voice is what moves this. It's dry, witty, thoughtful, and sad all at once.
May 13, 2018
I won this book through Goodreads in exchange for a fair and honest review. I enjoyed reading about Brazil and the adventures there. I thought the author described the country well, and although I wasn't too into it, I was glad to read the story, if you are really interested in Brazil I would recommend it,
January 21, 2018
I received an ARC from Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.
The vast majority of books I get in giveaways go directly into my Little Free Library. Somehow this one caught my attention when I scanned the first few paragraphs. So glad it did.
It gets 5 stars from me because I really like the "voice" of the narrator. She was thoughtful, intelligent, sometimes very funny, and spoke of herself honestly, so she didn't always come off as likable. The discomfort in the relationship with her husband, of not being in the same place in their lives and having a disconnect between them is so relatable for anyone who has ever had a long relationship.
I also like the development of the story. It is not linear, at all. It is told in short bursts of memory that unfold slowly, like getting to know a new friend, you see them one way at first, but then, over time, more and more is revealed and you get a deeper understanding of who they are and what their life is like.
Finally, the time in Brazil, with the protests, unrest, inequality, and conflict between classes resonated too clearly with current times in the US. It used to be easy to think of other countries as "other". Now it is painfully clear that the US is just as much a "banana republic" as anyplace else.
Highly recommended for anyone willing to be made a little bit uncomfortable while they read.
The vast majority of books I get in giveaways go directly into my Little Free Library. Somehow this one caught my attention when I scanned the first few paragraphs. So glad it did.
It gets 5 stars from me because I really like the "voice" of the narrator. She was thoughtful, intelligent, sometimes very funny, and spoke of herself honestly, so she didn't always come off as likable. The discomfort in the relationship with her husband, of not being in the same place in their lives and having a disconnect between them is so relatable for anyone who has ever had a long relationship.
I also like the development of the story. It is not linear, at all. It is told in short bursts of memory that unfold slowly, like getting to know a new friend, you see them one way at first, but then, over time, more and more is revealed and you get a deeper understanding of who they are and what their life is like.
Finally, the time in Brazil, with the protests, unrest, inequality, and conflict between classes resonated too clearly with current times in the US. It used to be easy to think of other countries as "other". Now it is painfully clear that the US is just as much a "banana republic" as anyplace else.
Highly recommended for anyone willing to be made a little bit uncomfortable while they read.
March 7, 2018
Thanks so much to NetGalley, Little, Brown & Company, and Ian MacKenzie for the opportunity to read and review his latest work!
This is the story of Emma - a woman from NYC who with her banker husband move to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for his work. Emma is fascinated with language and ends up being a tutor of sorts to various people in Brazil - simultaneously trying to learn Portuguese while teaching English. Emma is also struggling with her husband about having children - she doesn't want to; he does. Brazil is in a state of civil unrest while they are there with many demonstrations happening, causing Emma to rethink her life and beliefs.
The writing in this book is wonderful, even though it may not be my style. You can really get a taste of being plucked from NYC and set into the strange world of Brazil, where everything is different complicated by the language barrier. However, I struggled to care much about the characters and it was a bit confusing when the back story was being told.
This is the story of Emma - a woman from NYC who with her banker husband move to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for his work. Emma is fascinated with language and ends up being a tutor of sorts to various people in Brazil - simultaneously trying to learn Portuguese while teaching English. Emma is also struggling with her husband about having children - she doesn't want to; he does. Brazil is in a state of civil unrest while they are there with many demonstrations happening, causing Emma to rethink her life and beliefs.
The writing in this book is wonderful, even though it may not be my style. You can really get a taste of being plucked from NYC and set into the strange world of Brazil, where everything is different complicated by the language barrier. However, I struggled to care much about the characters and it was a bit confusing when the back story was being told.
July 14, 2018
Sigh. Well, let's start with the writing. While different, and perhaps best described as akin to edited free flow and provided to the reader by paragraph and/or page from the point of view of the main character, was suprisingly very interesting and enjoyable to read.
The story was...well... another story. It had a lot of promise. The author built in lots of detail into the daily life of the main character and her background, which potentially could have lead off into several interesting directions. However the author decided to end the story like an exerpt from everyday life and just move on instead of giving us a plot to focus on or even a proper ending to pull the details together.
I was really torn with how to rate this book, and the technical aspects of the writing were very good, but I was very diasppointed in the overall story. 2.5 is where I landed.
If you are looking for some interesting suggestions on books to read and my reviews, please look me up on facebook under BELINDA'S BOOK CLUB VOLG.
The story was...well... another story. It had a lot of promise. The author built in lots of detail into the daily life of the main character and her background, which potentially could have lead off into several interesting directions. However the author decided to end the story like an exerpt from everyday life and just move on instead of giving us a plot to focus on or even a proper ending to pull the details together.
I was really torn with how to rate this book, and the technical aspects of the writing were very good, but I was very diasppointed in the overall story. 2.5 is where I landed.
If you are looking for some interesting suggestions on books to read and my reviews, please look me up on facebook under BELINDA'S BOOK CLUB VOLG.
October 17, 2018
Quite well written and there are some nice phrases "she had teeth like formica" and "the molecular hardness of a one child family unit" (or something close to that) but it never really gets going. THe book is promoted with a line from a review about "American innocents abroad" which is absurd, these people are worldly wise-cracking New Yorkers, hardly naive, or rubes. The adventure of the well paid expat life lead by the New York banker and his wife - the narrator - in Sao Paulo is contrasted witht he lives of the poor and the elite in Brazil and there are some nicely painted scenes however, beyond this, the book never really goes anywhere and reads a bit like an extended creative writing exercise in which the author is having great time but is not really taking the reader along. Would not surprise me to learn that the author teaches creative writing.
November 20, 2018
I really enjoyed the writing and did not like the book. I anticipated the introduction of a new culture, Brazil with all the contradictions, politics and colours.
Instead you follow a pampered, entitled young couple, who found themselves in a place where food, entertainment and benefits are endless for consumption. The husband works, the wife observes, contemplates and getting bored. Around them the country is in turmoil, the constant protests and demonstrations are a simple background for the lazy, slow, comfortable life of the rich Americans. There are migrants form the poorest countries, there are corruption and crime in favelas, there are constant parties for the rich, they are the world apart.
I waited for something big to happen to shake them up, but at the end they simply left.
Instead you follow a pampered, entitled young couple, who found themselves in a place where food, entertainment and benefits are endless for consumption. The husband works, the wife observes, contemplates and getting bored. Around them the country is in turmoil, the constant protests and demonstrations are a simple background for the lazy, slow, comfortable life of the rich Americans. There are migrants form the poorest countries, there are corruption and crime in favelas, there are constant parties for the rich, they are the world apart.
I waited for something big to happen to shake them up, but at the end they simply left.
August 27, 2018
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway earlier this year I’m torn about my feelings towards it. The writing was good and kept me intrigued. I also liked how the story was told in moments instead of as linear narrative tale. What I’m not so sure about is the main character’s story. What was her arc? How did she grow as a character from start to finish? What I basically got out of the story is that her and her husband were sent to Brazil because of his job and she was commentating on societal issues there, societal issues in general, on Capitalism, etc. I didn’t love the story and I didn’t hate the story...it was just a story. But it was well written!
March 18, 2018
This is the story of a woman who moves to Brazil with her husband as he has a job there with an international bank. She does not really have a job, but does work as a translator and gets involved with a church that helps immigrants, as well as the Brazilian politics. Couple that with the unrest in the marriage as her husband wants children and she does not know if she does or not. Well written, but I felt the ending was rather flat and left me wondering why I picked up the book in the first place.
March 16, 2018
Thank you Little, Brown for my free copy for review! All opinions are my own.
Ian Mackenzie's FEAST DAYS is an interesting observation of how it is a privilege to feel the need to get involved, and a privilege to have that choice. The style consists of a series of aloof observations. Emma: "housewife" of a wealthy investment banker (or, as he says, a man who"works in finance") living in Brazil after they were relocated by his company.
We all have these stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, just based on our personal histories. Emma's sense of purpose and self seems to disintegrate as she is forced to explore who she is outside of that story. Sao Paolo is a city where the lives of the wealthiest and most comfortable intersect daily with the suffering and impoverished. She is of a class that does not have to become involved, but slowly the unrest of Sao Paolo seeps in. Emma is forced to begin to interact with her surroundings as her conscience and her awareness of humanity awakens.
Mackenzie's real triumph in Feast Days is tone. This dry, apathetic tone is one of numb detachment. But even the tone slowly evolves as the city pulls Emma in and forces her to start observing herself, her mind, and her own relationships with the world.
Something so unique here is our narrator's evasiveness in that her commentary is so within the mind of the observer that certain things she knows or sees are assumed with no need to elaborate further to the reader. It left me feeling like I had to play catch-up at times, but other times felt deeply intimate - the way you feel when a good friend or significant other makes an observation without explanation and you're left to infer all of their meaning.
Mackenzie employs pristine, architectural structures - albeit different types of them, that flow fluidly from one to the next and then commit to a strict method of storytelling for a few pages at a time. This gives a very disjointed experience. One section in particular stands out towards the end called "Texts", in which Emma is texting between two people at once. The structure is such, that you can feel the conversations existing simultaneously in the mind and becoming one in the way they do when you are multi-tasking communication (as opposed to a typical storytelling structure of "he said, then she said, and next..").
I'm not sure why this was a 3-star read for me - at first I really loved the tone and the set-up, but as it dragged on I felt that I took on some of Emma's apathy.
*3 words: stark, agitate, insular
*what i loved: the idea that external environment can stir deep feelings within us and ask us to more closely observe our internal environment
*what I questioned: at times the cerebral elements of this book were so isolating that I had trouble allowing myself to respond emotionally to Emma's conflicts
*overall rating: 3 stars
* Find my bookish posts and reviews on IG @mlleboaz.bibliophile !
Ian Mackenzie's FEAST DAYS is an interesting observation of how it is a privilege to feel the need to get involved, and a privilege to have that choice. The style consists of a series of aloof observations. Emma: "housewife" of a wealthy investment banker (or, as he says, a man who"works in finance") living in Brazil after they were relocated by his company.
We all have these stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, just based on our personal histories. Emma's sense of purpose and self seems to disintegrate as she is forced to explore who she is outside of that story. Sao Paolo is a city where the lives of the wealthiest and most comfortable intersect daily with the suffering and impoverished. She is of a class that does not have to become involved, but slowly the unrest of Sao Paolo seeps in. Emma is forced to begin to interact with her surroundings as her conscience and her awareness of humanity awakens.
Mackenzie's real triumph in Feast Days is tone. This dry, apathetic tone is one of numb detachment. But even the tone slowly evolves as the city pulls Emma in and forces her to start observing herself, her mind, and her own relationships with the world.
Something so unique here is our narrator's evasiveness in that her commentary is so within the mind of the observer that certain things she knows or sees are assumed with no need to elaborate further to the reader. It left me feeling like I had to play catch-up at times, but other times felt deeply intimate - the way you feel when a good friend or significant other makes an observation without explanation and you're left to infer all of their meaning.
Mackenzie employs pristine, architectural structures - albeit different types of them, that flow fluidly from one to the next and then commit to a strict method of storytelling for a few pages at a time. This gives a very disjointed experience. One section in particular stands out towards the end called "Texts", in which Emma is texting between two people at once. The structure is such, that you can feel the conversations existing simultaneously in the mind and becoming one in the way they do when you are multi-tasking communication (as opposed to a typical storytelling structure of "he said, then she said, and next..").
I'm not sure why this was a 3-star read for me - at first I really loved the tone and the set-up, but as it dragged on I felt that I took on some of Emma's apathy.
*3 words: stark, agitate, insular
*what i loved: the idea that external environment can stir deep feelings within us and ask us to more closely observe our internal environment
*what I questioned: at times the cerebral elements of this book were so isolating that I had trouble allowing myself to respond emotionally to Emma's conflicts
*overall rating: 3 stars
* Find my bookish posts and reviews on IG @mlleboaz.bibliophile !
October 8, 2020
Feast Days by Ian MacKenzie is a novel about a young upwardly mobile couple transferred to Sao Paulo, Brazil. MacKenzie's first novel was City of Strangers and his fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College, and has lived in New York City, Ethiopia, and Brazil.
I do not review much contemporary fiction because it seems to be written for instant entertainment without much depth or lasting memory. Feast Days is something different and, yes like many reviews have already said, it does deal with a young American couple in Brazil. He is an investment banker and she is trapped in a foreign country without much marketable skills or a visa that would allow her to work. The descriptions of Brazil are accurate. The division between the rich in their walled complexes and the poor in their shantytowns is very clear. Among the rich Brazilians, there is also a status competition. Emma, the American woman, works for friends teaching English. Having a tutor is a status symbol, even if one doesn't really need one.
There is crime on the streets. There is corruption in business and government. There are protests and protests that turn into riots. Children of the rich are joining in the fight if not for the movement for the thrill. Haitian immigrants legal and illegal are protected by the parish priests and become the new outcasts giving the poor someone to target. A great deal is given to the division of the people and to the chaos of society outside walled complexes.
The most interesting thing I found and what kept me digging into the story is the narrator. The cover flap will tell the reader her name is Emma. You will only find her name once in the text. Her husband does not refer to her by name nor do her Brazilain friends. Perhaps she is just another American woman with no value except as a status symbol tutor or wife. Equally interesting is her husband. He is never referred to by name. When they were dating Emma refers to him as "the man who would become my husband." She addresses and refers to him as "my husband" throughout the rest of the book. No one addresses him by name. Perhaps he too is just another Yankee in a foreign country. There for a while then replaced with another equally forgettable person. This makes the book far more interesting to me than I originally expected. It added depth to the story that made it much more than just a story.
I do not review much contemporary fiction because it seems to be written for instant entertainment without much depth or lasting memory. Feast Days is something different and, yes like many reviews have already said, it does deal with a young American couple in Brazil. He is an investment banker and she is trapped in a foreign country without much marketable skills or a visa that would allow her to work. The descriptions of Brazil are accurate. The division between the rich in their walled complexes and the poor in their shantytowns is very clear. Among the rich Brazilians, there is also a status competition. Emma, the American woman, works for friends teaching English. Having a tutor is a status symbol, even if one doesn't really need one.
There is crime on the streets. There is corruption in business and government. There are protests and protests that turn into riots. Children of the rich are joining in the fight if not for the movement for the thrill. Haitian immigrants legal and illegal are protected by the parish priests and become the new outcasts giving the poor someone to target. A great deal is given to the division of the people and to the chaos of society outside walled complexes.
The most interesting thing I found and what kept me digging into the story is the narrator. The cover flap will tell the reader her name is Emma. You will only find her name once in the text. Her husband does not refer to her by name nor do her Brazilain friends. Perhaps she is just another American woman with no value except as a status symbol tutor or wife. Equally interesting is her husband. He is never referred to by name. When they were dating Emma refers to him as "the man who would become my husband." She addresses and refers to him as "my husband" throughout the rest of the book. No one addresses him by name. Perhaps he too is just another Yankee in a foreign country. There for a while then replaced with another equally forgettable person. This makes the book far more interesting to me than I originally expected. It added depth to the story that made it much more than just a story.
April 1, 2025
Smart, Cynical and EXHAUSTING.
I liked Feast Days — or maybe I liked the idea of it more than the experience of reading it. The concept is compelling: a woman navigating the unfamiliar terrain of expat life in São Paulo, disoriented by cultural dissonance, privilege, and her own marriage. But what starts as an introspective exploration quickly sours under the weight of its own tone.
The writing felt condescending — not in a subtle, self-aware way, but with a kind of smug, intellectual snobbery that taints every observation. There’s a persistent undercurrent of sarcasm and negativity, like the narrator is always holding the world at arm’s length, too clever for the people around her, too jaded to care. It’s exhausting.
And yes, it is impressive that a man wrote this in a woman’s voice — but even that felt like a trick. Like we’re supposed to stop and be dazzled by the ventriloquism, rather than engage with the substance. At times it felt like the voice was less a character and more a performance.
One moment that crystallized the problem for me: the narrator’s irritation when her friend Kathryn recalled a poem during a church visit. The pettiness of that moment — the assumption that a friend remembering a poem must be trying to show off — revealed so much. It wasn’t just about Kathryn. It was about the narrator’s worldview: suspicious, cynical, constantly scanning for slights. I found myself rolling my eyes more than once.
To be fair, I’ve never lived as an expat. I won’t pretend to know more about that life than the author, and maybe some of the discomfort is the point. But the tone pushed me away rather than pulling me in. I finished it only because I was genuinely hoping her husband would leave her — not out of malice, but because someone needed to shake her out of her self-satisfied spiral.
Feast Days had promise. It just got buried under the weight of its own cleverness.
I liked Feast Days — or maybe I liked the idea of it more than the experience of reading it. The concept is compelling: a woman navigating the unfamiliar terrain of expat life in São Paulo, disoriented by cultural dissonance, privilege, and her own marriage. But what starts as an introspective exploration quickly sours under the weight of its own tone.
The writing felt condescending — not in a subtle, self-aware way, but with a kind of smug, intellectual snobbery that taints every observation. There’s a persistent undercurrent of sarcasm and negativity, like the narrator is always holding the world at arm’s length, too clever for the people around her, too jaded to care. It’s exhausting.
And yes, it is impressive that a man wrote this in a woman’s voice — but even that felt like a trick. Like we’re supposed to stop and be dazzled by the ventriloquism, rather than engage with the substance. At times it felt like the voice was less a character and more a performance.
One moment that crystallized the problem for me: the narrator’s irritation when her friend Kathryn recalled a poem during a church visit. The pettiness of that moment — the assumption that a friend remembering a poem must be trying to show off — revealed so much. It wasn’t just about Kathryn. It was about the narrator’s worldview: suspicious, cynical, constantly scanning for slights. I found myself rolling my eyes more than once.
To be fair, I’ve never lived as an expat. I won’t pretend to know more about that life than the author, and maybe some of the discomfort is the point. But the tone pushed me away rather than pulling me in. I finished it only because I was genuinely hoping her husband would leave her — not out of malice, but because someone needed to shake her out of her self-satisfied spiral.
Feast Days had promise. It just got buried under the weight of its own cleverness.
April 4, 2018
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 This is going to be a hard book to describe. I thought the book was thought-provoking and an accurate depiction of the chaos that we see around the world today. The story is set in São Paulo, Brazil where a young American investment banker and his educated but unemployed wife live in order to advanced the husband’s career. Emma doesn’t speak the language of Brazil and lives behind walls and more walls. She is trained in the art of self-protection. She is a prisoner in her own home. Even today, no country has such a difference between the rich and the poor as found in Brazil. The middle class is almost non-existent. The book is seen through the eyes of the wife who is dissatisfied with her life of being rich but being invisible. The couple are robbed one night coming home from dinner and it is a turning point for Emma. This book reflects the malaise we see daily in our own lives. The struggle to survive whether rich or poor…but mostly poor, If you want an uplifting read, this isn’t it. If you want to read about the break-down of society, you need to look no further than this fictional book set in Brazil. I found it interesting and I will think about this for a long time. 3.5 stars.
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