O verão tardio

by Luiz Ruffato

O verão tardio, sexto romance de Luiz Ruffato, é uma história de inadequação. Depois de mais de vinte anos, Oséias, um homem abandonado por mulher e filho, decide regressar a sua cidade-natal, Cataguases, em Minas Gerais. Durante seis dias, seguimos passo a passo suas andanças, visitas a familiares, encontros com velhos personagens locais. A sombra do suicídio de uma de suas irmãs, Lígia, e a comunicação falha com praticamente todos a sua volta acompanham suas tentativas de reatar os fios do passado. Em meio a um Brasil que parece ir do projeto à ruína a todo momento, O verão tardio propõe uma reflexão sobre uma sociedade em que as classes sociais romperam completamente o diálogo e, como afirma um de seus personagens, se tornaram “planetas errantes” prontos para entrarem em rota de colisão e se destruírem.

Genres: Fiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 2019

About the author

Luiz Ruffato (Cataguases, fevereiro de 1961) é um escritor brasileiro. Formado em Comunicação pela Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, exerceu jornalismo em São Paulo. Publicou Histórias de Remorsos e Rancores (1998) e Os sobreviventes em 2000, ambos coletâneas de contos. Ganhou os prêmios APCA (Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte) e Machado de Assis da Fundação Biblioteca Nacional com o romance Eles Eram Muitos Cavalos, de 2001.

Reviews

[Tiago Germano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inverno da alma

Se "Flores Artificiais" (2014) é o registro de uma diáspora da obra de Luiz Ruffato de Cataguases, este "O Verão Tardio" é o registro de um triunfal retorno a estas raízes. E o curioso é que o que aquele tem de disperso (um romance que na verdade é uma coletânea de contos ou, melhor dizendo, de crônicas de viagem forçadamente compilados numa frágil estrutura de romance), este tem de concentrado: um retorno inspirado do autor ao gênero, depois de uma década menos profusa que a anterior, marcada pelo estabelecimento da saga "Inferno Provisório".

O argumento parece banal na literalidade desta transcrição simbólica: Oséias, um representante comercial que fez sua vida na estrada (embora tivesse São Paulo como base geográfica e familiar), retorna ao interior mineiro após um casamento frustrado que lhe gerou um filho problemático, ao qual o pai manifesta pouco apego. Mortos seus próprios pais e a irmã suicida, ali na pequena cidade o protagonista encontra os laços familiares que lhe restam: a irmã nova rica, às voltas com suas inquietações de burguesa emergente (as dietas, o curso de línguas e as viagens para Nova Iorque); a irmã mais pobre, na luta diária pela sobrevivência (os dois netos que cria, o marido abusivo, os "bicos" de um filho malando e o parasitismo do outro); e o irmão rico, preocupado com a própria segurança e dos seus empreendimentos financeiros e matrimoniais (a chácara onde realiza churrascos semanais para seus trabalhadores, e as duas famílias que mantém: a sua e a de sua amante).

É louvável a maneira pela qual Ruffato constrói este verdadeiro painel dos estratos sociais brasileiros sem resvalar na cartilha sociológica de uma literatura que, privilegiando a crítica a este retrato, acaba por negligenciar as nuances psicológicas que permeiam os personagens retratados. Neste sentido, o personagem Oséias revela-se um olhar perfeito pousado sobre este panorama: cínico, em sua disfunção (ele não conseguiu se inserir em nenhuma destas posições), e igualmente empático em sua situação afetiva e emocional (são os seus irmãos ali: todos eles com famílias desestruturadas como a sua, e com uma parcela tão grande como a dele de responsabilidade no quinhão desta desestrutura).

A isso se sobrepõe a culpa que todos (em maior ou menor grau, reagindo de uma maneira ou de outra) compartilham pelo suicídio da irmã: o suicídio, manifesto supremo de inadequação e, não à toa, um tema que vai ganhando cada vez mais importância ao longo das páginas. Como aditivo tangencial, há ainda o desenho muito bem delineado de um cenário provinciano aqui, a partir dos ex-colegas de escola, envolvidos em pequenas corrupções municipais, ou da ex-namorada, que representa todo um passeio pelo bosque de uma outra ficção que subjaz a esta: aquela do que seria a vida de Oséias se ele tivesse permanecido, tomado a outra curva da estrada, o outro rumo do destino.

"O Verão Tardio" é um retorno pródigo, de um filho nada pródigo, à casa dos pais.

[Mikko Saari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brasilialainen Luiz Ruffato on ollut tähän asti mielenkiintoinen kirjailija, eikä uusi teos Päättyy myöhäinen kesä petä odotuksia. Kirja kertoo kuusikymppisestä Oséias Nunesista, joka vakavasti sairaana palaa São Paulosta kotiseudulle Cataguasesiin kahdenkymmenen vuoden poissaolon jälkeen. Mitä kotiseudulla odottaa?

Taustalla on ainakin traumoja, jotka ovat pitäneet Oséiasin poissa kotiseudulta. Äiti ja isä ovat kuolleet jo jonkun aikaa sitten, isänsä hautajaisiin Oséias ei edes saapunut. Kaksi Oséiasin siskoa asuu yhä Cataguasesissa, toinen menestyksekkäänä koulun rehtorina, toinen köyhemmissä oloissa. Kolmas sisko on traagisesti poissa, yhtenä Oséiasin elämän suurista menneisyyden haavoista. Veli João Lúcio irtaantui perheestä jo nuoruudessaan ja elää rikkaan miehen elämää läheisellä pikkupaikkakunnalla. Vanhat tutut, luokkakaverit ja muut ovat kuka missäkin osassa, yksi jopa kaupunginjohtajana.

Oséias hortoilee muutaman päivän ajan ympäriinsä. Teksti on kappalejaotonta tajunnanvirtaa, jonka katkaisee ainoastaan Oséiasin tajunnan katkeaminen: lukija saa hengähdystauon aina kun Oséias nukahtaa, silloin havaintojen, huomioiden ja arkisten toimien virta katkeaa hetkeksi. Muuten kirjassa kuvataan yksityiskohtaisesti kuljeskelua, syömistä, juomista, vessassa käymistä, sen sellaista, mikä tavallisesti romaaneissa ohitetaan joko nopealla maininnalla tai kokonaan.

Dialogikin on leivottu tekstin sekaan, sentään lainausmerkein merkittynä, mutta sekin soljuu hyvin luonnollisesti ja epämuodollisesti. Valittu kerrontatapa on raskasta ja hengästyttävää lukea, mutta onnistuu viemään lukijan Brasilian polttavan kuumaan helteeseen ja Oséiasin mielenmaisemiin tehokkaasti.

Päättyy myöhäinen kesä on sekä kuvaus elämästä brasilialaisessa pikkukaupungissa tänä päivänä, että universaalimpi kuvaus juurilleen palaamisesta parinkymmenen vuoden poissaolon jälkeen. Oséias kohtaa taakseen jättämiä asioita ja ihmissuhteita ja tämä on tietysti yleismaailmallista: jokainen, joka on jättänyt lapsuudenkotinsa ja siihen liittyvät muistot, haavat, taakat ja ihmissuhteet taakseen, pystyy tunnistamaan ajatukset, jotka liittyvät palaamiseen ja vanhojen ihmissuhteiden uudelleenlämmittelyyn. Kun Ruffato tekee sen vielä kirjallisesti kiinnostavalla tavalla, käsissä on oikein mainio teos.

[Wally Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reader Alert! The following includes spoilers. Do not read on if you are the sort of person who is upset by learning how a book ends before you’re read it.

Ordinarily, I avoid giving away an ending, but (a) careful readers of Luiz Ruffato’s Late Summer will know how the novel must end halfway through, and (b) the pleasure the book offers has little to do with how the book ends.

Ruffato was born in Cataguases, a small industrial city in southeastern Brazil. The novel is set there and, if the text is to be believed (and why not?), the town has fallen on evil days. The textile factories on which the economy was based have closed. The polluted and stinking river Pomba floods during the rainy season. Street crime is common.

The grandson of immigrants who fled northern Italy, Ruffato worked throughout his youth as a bar clerk, textile worker, street book vendor, and turner to supplement the income of his parents, a popcorn vendor and a laundress. He earned a journalism degree from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, and later settled in São Paulo.

He is the author of eight novels as well as short story collections, poetry, and essays. In addition to numerous Brazilian literary prizes, his works have received the Premio Casa de las Américas (Cuba) and the Hermann Hesse Literaturpreis (Germany), and have been published in thirteen countries. Since 2003 Ruffato has worked exclusively as a writer.

Late Summer begins with Oseias Moretto Nunes, an older (elderly?) Cataguases native returning to his home town from Sao Paolo on Tuesday, March 3, which could make it 2015. His wife has left him taking their son. He is sick, and he is tired. He still has two sisters living in the city; a third sister, Légia, is dead. And he has a successful and wealthy brother. His parents are dead. He did not return to the city for their funerals.

Oseias spends five days in the city, two nights his sister Rosana’s houses. Rosana is a school principal, visits New York City once a year, is fighting a furious if losing battle with the signs of aging, and is married to a doctor Ricardo. After the second night, Rosana leaves a note in her “teacherly scrawl”:

“Oseias, I’m afraid this situation can’t go on. Ricardo has been patient, too patient. I don’t want to get into a fight with him at this point in my life. He’d appreciate it, we’d appreciate it, if you could find some other place to stay. Rosana.” He moves to a cheap hotel.

A former school chum is now mayor and Oseias attempts to see him, finally ambushing him one morning. The mayor is not interested in talking about old times and brushes him off. Oseias does connect accidentally with a former art teacher who is now sick and penniless and who would like to talk about old times. Oseias is repulsed and escapes.

He visits his younger sister Isinha (Isabela), who is married to an affable drunk and has an ingrate and shiftless adult son who has at least two illegitimate children. Isinha, although poor and estranged from her Cataguases siblings, seems to have accepted her portion. She washes and irons his dirty laundry Oseias brings her. But in a house overflowing with children, Isinha has no place—or much time—for her brother.

João Lúcio, Oseias’s younger brother, having been given a leg up by an uncle, has been able to turn a local sawmill into a regional furniture manufacturer and himself into a rich man with a big house, a pool, a wife and a mistress. Caught unawares by his older brother’s arrival, he invites Oseias to spend the night in the guest room although he cannot stay with him. He has an unspecified appointment elsewhere.

In the final pages, Oseias showers in João Lúcio’s house, dresses in his clean, freshly ironed clothes, destroys his driver’s license and ID, crushes the pills he’s been collecting for his condition (cancer?) to make a cocktail. On Sunday, March 8, he hides himself in the deep woods behind the estate and kills himself.

Late Summer is so vivid, so alive that it did not occur to me until much later to wonder how Oseias was able to tell his story in the first person—the only way it could be told and have the effect it has—if he were dead.

I can imagine some readers will be put off by the 277 pages of solid type, no paragraphs. The book’s design reflects Oseias’s thoughts and perceptions, leavened with dialogue, as they pour from him.

I can also imagine readers being put off by all the unfamiliar names of relatives, children, friends, associates, acquaintances. Julia Sanches’s translation from Portuguese is fluent and smooth however, so anything the reader bumps on is the author’s not hers. (For example, I had to look up “Cebion” to learn it’s a branded form of vitamin C.)

But you don’t read Late Summer to ask how a dead narrator can tell his story or for the plot. You read it—or I read it once I became acclimated to the lack of paragraphing—for a powerful evocation of a man trying to make sense of his life. To explain to himself how he came to be where he is. To attempt one last time to only connect with his sisters, his brother, his nieces and nephews, his childhood companions.

You read Late Summer for a compelling portrait of contemporary Brazilian life. Ruffato’s evocation of Cataguases is not one that will please the local tourist office. (And I cannot imagine what the Covid-19 pandemic is doing to the town.)

You read Late Summer because it extends your knowledge of what it is to be human.

[Susanna Rautio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kuuden päivän tarinassa oli kiinnostavat hetkensä, mutta niihin ei kuulunut alkupäivä tiistai eikä loppupäivä sunnuntai.

Ruffato taitaa olla niitä kirjailijoita, jotka osavaat loihtia paikan ja perhe-elämän tunnun kuten teki tässä tarinassa, jossa viisikymppinen mies palaa parinkymmenen vuoden poissaolon jälkeen kotikaupunkiinsa Cataguasesiin. Mies kokoaa yhteen lapsuuden ja nuoruuden tunteet ja tunnelmat ennen kuin perhe hajosi ja etääntyi toisistaan.

Ruffaton tekniikka oli sekoittaa yhteen havaintoja, nykyhetkessä ja menneisyydessä hyppeleviä ajatuksia ja luettuna pitkästyttäviä vuorokauteen mahtuvia rutiineja.

Tarina oli yhdenlainen versio viimeisestä sovituksesta, jossa oli paljon kiinostavaa (yhteiskunnallista, aina kannattaa ja pitää lukea itselle ei tutuista kulttuureista) ja vähän liikaa arkkityyppisiä (kirjallisuudessa toistuvia, ennalta-arvattavia) teemoja, joihin kuului myös Oséias päähenkilö.

[Cristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Most Haunted House is the Body

“A house’s rooms don’t hold the voices and joys and sorrows of those who lived in it. A house exists only here and now; there is no before or after. You may be able to touch the furniture, the objects, but never the people, much less their stories… These houses will one day also crumble, and not even the memory of them will survive.”

* * *

“The past is ruins.”

* * *

“It isn’t my body they’ll bury—what is a body?—but everything I once was, my memories, the people who live inside me and who I can visit by closing me eyes. They’ll disappear with me forever, as if they’d never existed.”

* * *

“I’m a frightened ghost barreling into bodies that move restless through the past.”

Excerpts from:
Late Summer (2019) by Luiz Ruffato (translated from Portuguese to English by Julia Sanches)
Original title: O Verão Tardio (2019)

* * *

I can’t remember where I first stumbled across Luiz Ruffato’s O Verão Tardio (Late Summer) (2019), but a tale of secrets, a crumbling and divided family, loneliness, and fear told in real-time narration—and originally written in Portuguese—is my kind of novel. This Cataguases, Brazil-set tale charts a few days in March (a reminder: Brazil’s summer runs December to March, which explains the novel’s title), and is narrated in first-person, stream-of-consciousness style. Sometimes, sentences end in the middle. Punctuation and capitalization can be randomized around the “edges” of certain memories. Words get repeated when our protagonist is caught in a dream or fugue state. Memories butt against one another without clear connection at first, then fade from past to present. Although there are six different sections, each titled a date from Tuesday, March 3 to Sunday, March 8 (note: it ends on a Day of Rest), within the sections, there are no individual paragraphs and even dialogue between people just runs together in line after line of loaded words that keep you reading and moving along with protagonist Oséias Moretto Nunes.

Nonetheless, don’t let this untraditional structure deter you from reading Late Summer. I can’t recall the last time I was so attentive to the personal and profane, the small and the sacred details of life—from countless ablutions, to vomit-inducing smells, to the specific ingredients of a meal—since James Joyce’s Ulysses (was there ever a more concentrated, Cubist-like description of a gorgonzola sandwich committed to literature?).

After nearly two decades away, Oséias, a 50-something-year-old sick man, shows up unexpectedly in in his hometown, visiting his aging siblings and the family cemetery plot, all the while haunted by the 40-years-ago suicide of one of his sisters. It seems he wants something, but he doesn’t—can’t or won’t—articulate it clearly. He carries only a wallet and backpack of items, as well as a hat, over which he obsesses, to cover the bald spot on his head, which gets sunburned as he traverses the winding streets (how Prufrockian). He has no cellphone, no sure plan, and an estranged son and ex-wife out there somewhere who are indifferent to him. As Ruffato’s novel intimates, the greatest fear is not just that your body breaks down, life betrays you, that you can die at any moment, or that people who once loved you or claimed they did have abandoned you. It’s that not even the place of comfort that you thought you could depend upon—your home, your hometown—exists any longer. Memory is our greatest enemy: it traps us in places that are gone as soon as we’ve left them. But it’s all Oséias has—memory—so what happens when the one thing he has proves untrustworthy? When he is a stranger in his city, mistaken as a homeless man or a criminal, unrecognized by those who knew him once upon a time? Misunderstood by his own siblings? How threatening the city becomes at night, full of drug addicts and prostitutes and unfamiliar places and glass in the streets and strangers reaching out at you, looking for something you don’t have an hoping you’re someone you aren’t.

Most notably, this novel is governed by the painful realities of Oséias. His body is decaying; so is the town that once housed it, that gave this body life and structure and shock and trauma. Unlike Joyce’s peripatetic Leopold Bloom who eats with such relish, Ruffato’s narrator seems to toss up anything he swallows, always running towards bathrooms (the public and private, most of them utterly disgusting and a few all-too-familiar). There’s constant expulsion here (I’m reminded of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing), of memory and guilt—the body is in on it. It’s always rejecting anything it intakes in this new-old environment, the childhood hometown that, revisited after twenty years, feels like a betrayal to nostalgia-washed memory. Who hasn’t tasted that sourness, that tang of disappointment? What Ruffato captures is the human attempt to trace a life unraveled back to where it all went wrong—not out of some unrealistic desire to change things but, instead, to simply make sense. For the narrator, it is where his family—his father, mother, and five siblings including himself—began to sever from the domestic sphere that kept them optimistic and focused, bound together like any other family with shared blood. It’s the moment his sister Lígia took her own life at fifteen. “Soon I too will be a portrait, a date, a name…Body, bones, dust…Nothing at all…,” Oséias thinks at one point, adding, “I did everything wrong…And time has run out…I’m a sack of guilt and remorse.” This gnawing worry, indeed, is the driving force of the novel.

It is easy to take a quick view and declare Late Summer to be a novel about nothing. Ruffato spends much time recounting simple events. Bathing, using the bathroom, eating, vomiting, walking, riding a bus, running into old friends or teachers or girlfriends, befriending a street dog, trying to track down a former classmate who is now the town’s mayor, buying things and taking out one’s wallet, worrying about clean underwear, and sleeping. Finding ways to escape desperate loners who don’t want to let go of the first person who’s visited in months or ways to remain desired by the people who think would help. Clothes are washed. Faces are shaved (an echo of Buck Mulligan?). Coffees are drunk. Music wafts through the houses and streets in equal parts celebration and funeral dirge. That Cubist tendency to describe things in parts, to see every single bit of something in action and to record it as an accumulating swell rather than a single entity, is appropriate here: a dying man, desperate for peace, would note everything. Who knows if it’s the last time he may see it or say it, or have a chance to record it. Without giving away too much, the ending of Late Summer has the same feel as Emily Dickinson’s poem “I heard a Fly buzz”: the tone, the gentleness, the sharpness of the senses even among quietude. It all comes back to us in Ruffato’s finale, too.

It's all so raw and easily envisioned. I’ve never been to Brazil but Late Summer could take place in the old factory or vineyard towns of Western Europe (which I have visited many times), or any run-down town in another country where lofty ambitions are plentiful, success is questionable, and desperation drives struggling people to commit immoral acts. Meanwhile, everyone else just turns a blind eye; they’re too busy trying to exist to pay attention to how others are living.

In other words, this is not a glamorous novel. Its setting is not the Brazil of beaches and festas, nor São Paulo’s Carnival and winding roads of merriment. The wildness here takes place both within the protagonist’s sharp yet drifting memory as he clutches to his past and attempts to make sense of how things have become what they have; and the chaos of drug-infested and littered streets. Regardless of some dreadful descriptions, Ruffato celebrates life without romanticizing it; more often than not, the reality experienced here is frightening, ugly, predatory, and even monstrous. Even in one well-off sister’s home, Oséias is unwelcome, asked to leave after a couple of days and forced into a seedy hotel where pickpockets, prostitutes, and the desperate accumulate.

“Death renders us equal in annihilation,” Ruffato writes: “Just as our bodies decompose, so do the memories of our passage through the world.” Recording our history is the only sure way to stay anchored to someplace, some time. In this sense, the diary-like structure of Late Summer is telling. What is more, the ultimate sadness is that we may not live to enjoy our place in history, and others may not recognize our worth until it is too late. All in all, this is a book for anyone who has heard “Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near” and wondered both how to outrace it and how to jump aboard and just let things unfold as Fate allows. It grows dark towards the end (inevitably so; in fact, I knew how the novel would end after only reading a few pages, but that will not stop you from wanting to keep reading to figure out not what but why). But when our protagonist confesses to us—readers—instead of to a Catholic priest, about “the mistake, the misstep, that continues to haunt and suffocate and devastate me,” who can not understand the fear of admission, yet need to come clean, even if what we’ve done is not necessarily our fault but, rather, the result of a series of unfortunate events that have sent our lives plummeting right at the very moment they should have risen? Who cannot relate to our own self-loathing, the way in which we become haunted by regret and remorse? Who cannot feel for Oséias, a displaced man with nowhere to go but into the darkness that was, perhaps, always waiting—as it is for everyone?

[Laura Lícia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Kirja Vieköön! · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the Finnish translation by Tarja Härkönen.

Teos vie Ruffaton synnyinkaupunkiin Cataguesesiin, jossa nykyään asuu noin 75.000 asukasta. Romaanin minäkertoja Oséias on samaa ikäluokkaa Ruffaton kanssa ja myös italialainen syntyperä on heillä yhteistä. São Paulossa kaksikymmentä vuotta asunut vakavasti sairas Oséias palaa synnyinkaupunkiinsa tapaamaan sisaruksiaan. Oséias on jättänyt kaiken taakseen ja matkassa on lopullisuuden tuntu. Mukana repussa on vain vaihtovaatteet ja jäljellä olevat rahat. Mies kokee epäonnistuneensa elämässä täysin. Hän on köyhä, takana on avioliitto ja työ lannoitteiden myyntiedustajana. Ainoaan poikaan Nicolauhun ei ole mitään yhteyttä.

Sisarusten vieraantuminen alkoi sisko Lígian traagisesta kuolemasta, josta Oséias on kantanut musertavaa syyllisyyttä koko ikänsä. Loput neljä sisarusta jakautuvat köyhiin ja rikkaisiin kuten Brasilian kansakin. Siskoista Rosana on rikas, Isinha köyhä, mutta kumpikaan ei ole onnellinen. Veli João Lúcio on rikas, mutta joutuu suojelemaan itseään bitbullein ja revolverein.

Ruffaton kirjoitustyyli kuvaa loistavasti Oséiaksen kuumeista mieltä. Menneisyys ja nykyisyys sekoittuvat saumatta tekstissä, jossa ei ole kappalejakoja. Lukija saa pienen hengähdystauon, kun Oséias uupuneena nukahtaa: sen Ruffato merkitsee sulkumerkein ja rivivälein. Myös välimerkkien käyttö on kaukana tavanomaisesta. Aina ei ole pilkkuja eikä pisteitä, eikä versaalejakaan. Oséiaksen kuumeiset ajatukset puuroutuvat usein sanapötköiksi. Kirja ei ole kevyt lukupala, koska kaikki luvut ovat yhtä tiivistä kappaletta. Mutta vaikuttavan ja tyylipuhtaan kuvauksen nyky-Brasiliasta romaani kieltämättä antaa

[Sorry Entertainer · Rating 4 out of 5]

O protagonista é Oséias, um homem de meia-idade, que vai para a cidade do interior em que cresceu, em busca de seu passado. Abandonado pela esposa e filho, é um sujeito comum, simples, sem nada a perder. O romance é escrito num fluxo de consciência denso, entre as observações do protagonista e suas recordações, que se intercalam. A narrativa se passa por vários dias na vida desse personagem, do despertar ao adormecer.

Não é um livro alegre ou divertido, mas foi difícil não achar graça do cenário, e até certo ponto, dos personagens, pela identificação que tive com eles. Como interiorano, e que rodou muito por cidades médias, pequenas e minúsculas, posso atestar que a Cataguazes do livro poderia ser toda e qualquer cidade de interior. Os familiares e conhecidos de Oséias --e você não acha um amigo sequer-- me pareceram gente real, retratos perfeitos de brasileiros. Não só pelas características, e nem pelo diálogo, mas por conta da falha de comunicação entre todos. É um cenário melancólico, sufocante.

Li O Verão Tardio numa excelente (ou péssima) hora: parte de minha leitura foi, também, visitando família no interior. Talvez seja por isso que fiquei tão impactado. É um livro que parece estar sendo escrito agora. De todos os que li do Luiz Ruffato, se tornou o meu favorito. Se a minha recomendação valer alguma coisa, recomendo que leiam, mas estejam preparados, pois é uma leitura que vai estragar o seu humor de uma vez só.

[Juan Manuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es la primera vez que leo un libro en portugués, así que seguramente pude perder un poco de detalles en las descripciones del autor. Sin embargo, debo decir que el autor hace un gran esfuerzo por describir las situaciones, los momentos y las vivencias del personaje, tan así que logré vivir muchos de esos momentos difíciles de reflexión. Al comienzo me costó ir y volver al pasado dentro de un mismo párrafo, sin signos de puntuación que los separe, pero luego entendí que esta es la forma en que el autor trata de hacernos vivir lo que sucede en nuestra cabeza en el día a día, los recuerdos van y vuelven, se mezclan con nuestro día y nos envuelven. Gracias Luiz por compartirnos tu libro y espero haya sido de algún modo una catarsis en cuerpo propio o ajeno de cosas difíciles de la vida contemporánea.

[Azzurra Sichera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oséias ha più di un segreto quando arriva nella città in cui è nato. Un segreto del passato, che lo tormenta, che lo divora dall’interno, e un segreto del presente, che fa esattamente la stessa cosa.

Lo seguiamo durante sei giorni in cui è per lo più spaesato: torna a camminare su quelle vie, che sono sempre le stesse eppure così diverse; incontra persone che riconosce senza sapere chi siano diventate.

E quando prova a parlare del passato, a chiedere, i ricordi non sono mai allineati, nemmeno con i suoi fratelli. C’è chi lo rimprovera di non guardare avanti, chi quasi non capisce le sue domande, e chi ha troppo da fare per pensarci.

Il senso di smarrimento di Oséias in “La tarda estate” è una costante insieme al suo declino, inarrestabile.

La recensione completa sul blog: https://www.silenziostoleggendo.com/2...

[Alice Civai · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Tropicale
- Ritorni
- Descrittivo

"Questi alberi mi hanno vegliato, questo selciato ha accompagnato i miei passi… I muri hanno le orecchie, ma non la bocca. Se l’avessero, racconterebbero del bambino magro che volava per la città con la sua bicicletta Caloi verde, ingoiando il paesaggio. Padrone del tempo, ampliavo sempre di più gli orizzonti, senza sapere che questo spazio, dilatato, mi avrebbe fatto perdere la rotta, la testa, per poi, alla fine, sbarcare nello stesso identico luogo, ma così diverso che non riesco a ritrovare colui che sono stato, così come spesso non riconosciamo, nelle vecchie fotografie, i volti delle persone che abbiamo accanto."

"Esiste solo qui e ora, senza prima né dopo. Possiamo toccare i mobili, gli oggetti, ma non le persone… E anche le case un giorno andranno in rovina, e neanche il ricordo della loro esistenza sussisterà."

[Charly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sparsely written in brief clipped sentences...this existential work, reminiscent of Camus, is centred around a displaced man, cut adrift, despondently wandering from place to place; racked with remorse, haunted by past tragedy & a fractured family past. Seeking solice, lost connections & sadly failing. A lachrymose 5 star read. One for those who appreciate "The Evenings" by Gérard Reve.

[Mario Soares · Rating 5 out of 5]

Que denso! Que detalhista! Que poético! Lidos todos os 10 finalistas, se me coubesse escolher o gangador do Jabuti 2020 de melhor romance, teria muita dúvida entre "Marrom e Amarelo" e "O Verão Tardio" ( ¡e que "Torto Arado" me perdoe!),

[Marthow · Rating 4 out of 5]

amo livros tristes. viver o cotidiano de oséias, o calor e suor intensos, a sujeira, a saudade, esse sentimento generalizado de inadequação.. tudo muito harmonioso e gostoso de ler. os momentos mais leves/engraçados não te tiram da história, deixam mais fluída :)

[Cristian Taglia · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://bookanieri.com/2020/10/09/la-t...

[Tarja Pirhonen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yksityiskohtaista kuvausta; hyvästijättö

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

feel this is an interesting storyline with believable characters

[Elton Furlanetto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um livro muito profundo e reflexivo sobre como as pessoas não se comunicam de verdade. Valeu bastante a leitura.

[Angélica Sousa da Mata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

tän kirjan tyyli, eli kokonaan putkeen kirjotettu ajatuksenjuoksu, oli mulle uutta ja virkistävää! pääsi päähenkilön pään sisään ihan uudella tavalla. lisää tämmöstä.

[Igor Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah... o passado. Ah... as famílias.
Ambos fontes eternas de magoas, intrigas e mal-entendidos. Sei que não é verdade para todos os passados e todas as famílias, mas eu diria que o é para um bom número. Misture isso à um constante questionamento da mortalidade e chegamos ao 'Verão Tardio'.

O livro, a minha primeira leitura de Ruffato, traz a história de Oséias, um homem amargurado, que volta à sua cidade natal, Cataguases, após vinte anos. Chega sem contar nada a ninguém. Chega reconhecendo quem não queria ser reconhecido, abrindo portas de parentes e do passado. Não é muito bem-vindo em nenhum lugar. O seu fracasso é aparente, o fracasso dos conhecidos também, seja lá em qual ordem: financeira, familiar, moral. O pessimismo vaga pela obra ao lado de Oséias, passeia com ele pelos cinco arrastados dias do romance.
Arrastados pois é difícil escrever sobre os dias de modo cativante. A obra oscila. O tema não ajuda. Todos os dias parecem ser os mesmos nos mais finos detalhes. Ruffato dá o tom, mas o verão nos cansa um pouco. Seu trunfo, seu pecado. Mas o marasmo nos faz mesmo pensar: é possível se desprender do passado e viver dias mais ricos?

"O futuro é uma projeção do passado. Somos o que fomos. Quem constrói nossa estrada somos nós mesmos. Nós é que traçamos o curso. Quando escolhemos uma direção, e não outra, definimos o nosso destino."

A família de Oséias foi se despedaçando aos poucos e, a morte por suicídio de sua irmã Lígia, acabou por consolidar essa quebra. A volta de Oséias, anos após o evento, mostra que as cicatrizes dele ainda estão presentes mesmo que as pessoas tentem disfarçá-lo. Cada um se agarra ao que pode, mas o passado está sempre presente.

[mina hanse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luin kirjan joskus keväällä, ja palaan nyt lisäämään sille yhden tähden. Huomaan palaavani tähän kirjaan usein ajatuksissani, joten on se täydet ansainnut. Täysi yllätys minulle löytyi sattumalta kirjastosta.