Tempo de Mercês

by Maria Judite de Carvalho

After 25 years away, Mateo Silva has returned to sell his childhood home so he can send his longtime girlfriend—whom he now realizes he may have never loved—on a trip to the Acropolis before her cancer kills her. Mateo sells the home to the first bidder: his wealthy neighbor from childhood, whose wife Graça enchanted Mateo as a young man. It was Graça’s beauty, paired with his father’s unfaithfulness, that broke up his family. But the woman he sees now bears little resemblance to the one he remembers, and you can’t move forward by revisiting the past.

In searing prose, keenly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, the Portuguese master Maria Judite de Carvalho’s narrator is at a crossroads, but too paralyzed to change direction in the life that he no longer seems to control.

Genres: Literature, Portuguese Literature

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

MARIA JUDITE DE CARVALHO nasceu em Lisboa a 18 de Setembro de 1921. Estreou-se com o livro de contos Tanta Gente, Mariana (1959) e foi galardoada com o Prémio Camilo Castelo Branco pela colectânea As Palavras Poupadas (1961). Além de contos, publicou romances e crónicas, cultivando também o jornalismo. Na sua obra reflecte-se o dramatismo da solidão do mundo urbano, onde há muita gente e pouca alma. Publicou Paisagem Sem Barcos (1965), Os Armários Vazios (1966), Flores ao Telefone (1968), Os Idólatras (1969), Tempo das Mercês (1973), A Janela Fingida (1975), O Homem no Arame (1976), Além do Quadro (1983), Seta Despedida (1995), A Flor que Havia na Água Parada (1998) e Havemos de Rir? (1998). Reuniu parte das suas crónicas em Este Tempo (1992) e Diário de Emília Bravo (2002, póstumo). Foi condecorada pela Presidência da República com o Grande-Oficialato da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique, em 1992 e recebeu, a título póstumo, o Prémio Vergílio Ferreira, pelo conjunto da sua obra, em 1998.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Within the first few pages of this 1973 Portuguese novella written by Maria Judite de Carvalho and translated by Margaret Jull Costa, I was a bit unsure about the writing, which seemed overly descriptive at times. But I'm very glad I stayed with it. Carvalho passed away in 1998 but was a wonderful writer who was very skilled at delivering razor sharp insights about her characters, about how people interact with one another, and about the beauty and disappointments of ordinary lives. The character touches are often subtle and always effective.

A beautiful and haunting work just published by Two Lines.

[mittencrabfarmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

slim but decadent, this is the most enjoyable novel i’ve read in years. carvalho’s writing, while more concise and less meandering than proust’s, had the same effect of putting me in a trance and reflecting on the “big questions” in life. really wish i read this in one sitting. gorgeous translation as well.

[Minh Anh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Narrative bookstore** for the ARC

[Mandy-Suzanne Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The magnificence of Margaret Jull Costa’s translations of Maria Judite de Carvalho lies in the quiet naturalness with which the sentences seem to flow despite being astonishing, sometimes radical, at times even disturbing. In Carvalho’s GRACE PERIOD, everything is quiet: the lushness of the prose, its anger and its barbs, the empty house, the characters’ various ways of stifling themselves; and quiet itself, like absence, is capable of different tones and connotations.

GRACE PERIOD, a novella, and the third volume of Carvalho’s fiction to be translated from the Portuguese by Costa, tarries with certain harrowing themes of their novel EMPTY WARDROBES. Characters in both works find themselves on the verge of the final edge, on the cusp of just beginning to understand that they are dying; and driving both books is the question of whether a life of solitude, terminating at a lonely death, is a horror or a luxury, a condition to be dreaded or savored. In GRACE PERIOD, each character manifests the latter ambiguity in her or his distinctive mode of emphatic ordinariness. Of particular note are Alberta, Natália, and Graça, who, sometimes despite themselves, challenge the persistent societal expectation that women should be ashamed to be “alone” (whatever that might mean in a crowded world). Costa’s nonliteral translation of the title, Tempo de mercês, as GRACE PERIOD, invites readers to watch Graça especially closely—particularly the lacunae and silences surrounding her.

In its opening chapter, the novella could be said to describe itself: the ominous quality of the “grace” to come, with its “aggressive, melancholy air of…train stations at night, stations where no one else gets off, and more to the point, where no one is there waiting to meet us”; the beauty Carvalho illuminates in everyday anguish, with tones like “a mixture of burned coal and flowers in full bloom, flowers that constantly grow and die, and, for hours or days, are just that, flowers, in the small, neat flowerbeds of the time.”

Many thanks to Two Lines Press for the review copy.

[Eduardo Andrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Captures a few emotions very well. A brief look into someone's life as they tear down in before rebuilding. The way Carvalho writes the conversations and attitudes arround heavy events in one's past is spot on.

7

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was completely engrossed by this book. It has a sort of atmosphere…
I felt some empathy for him at first but ended up hating the main character. I don’t think describing him as “at a crossroads” is correct at all, so take the blurb on this book with a grain of salt.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ending the year reading books about “family” - in all its forms. A new translation of a 1973 Portuguese novella, so happy I found it at my library.

[Cristina O'Hanlon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was drab and it was hard to care much about any of the characters

[Marin Beal · Rating 4 out of 5]

nostalgic and rich and incisive. it didn't speak directly ~to me~ or my innerworkings but i was a happy and contended viewer from the outside

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aptly titled, Mateo Silva stands in the neutral zone between his past and present. At this junction, with enough data compiled from childhood memories and the choices that custom built his current situation for most folks to take that next step towards the future, he hems, haws, reflects and refracts in a way most natural (and at times disturbingly relatable) in these crossroad situations. A quick read that can stay with you well after completion, as the substrata makes itself further apparent in your own reflective neutral zone, between this book and the next.