Status Updates From Dona flor e seus dois maridos

This was pitched to me as: “Widow gets remarried, but then first husband shows up as a ghost”. Second husband only showed up a little while ago, and there is still no sign of a ghost. I don’t particularly WANT to see husband #1 again (despite his off the charts charisma, he was bad for Flor)…but why the heck was “ghost husband” the pitch?!

“Dona Flor…hadn’t the slightest resemblance to stale bread…her delicate skin with a coppery sheen…Leftover, to be sure; she had had a husband…more appetizing, however, than many a cosseted virgin, for a maidenhead is not everything…if it is rated so highly that is because it has been in the hands of public relations agents for centuries”

“So discrete and modest a widow had never been seen…Outwardly, modesty personified. Calm-visaged and withdrawn, meekness itself; inwardly a raging fire…like Oxun, her patron deity. Ah, Dionisia, if you only knew how the fire of Oxun kindled the nights and the body of her comadre…you would order a bath of herbs or a husband for her!”

“‘Look at them. They are lovers,’ Vadinho remarked. Dona Flor had heard that there were such women, but she did not believe it… ‘Aren’t there men who are f*s, sweet? Well, there are women who only like women.’…Dona Gisa backed Vadinho up: ‘Such cases are fairly common in the most civilized countries.’”
And it’s a bit rich for Flor to call their situation ‘doomed love’, given her own disaster marriage!

“Who is going to take the trouble to bear good tidings? For that there is no hurry. Nobody goes running into the street for that. Only when there is bad news. To carry that…there are those who are willing to…give up their work, interrupt their rest, sacrificing themselves completely. To bring bad news - what a delightful treat!”

"Dona Flor with her husband Vadinho; she herself had picked him without listening to the advice of experienced people, against the express will of her mother...she had given herself to him knowing who he was. She might have committed an act of folly, but if she had not done it, her life would have had no meaning ."

“[Dona Rozilda] stretched out her hands dramatically: ‘Who ever heard of a rich man that was ugly?’ Flor smiled…Her answer shut her mother up: ‘You are talking as though I was a strumpet who judges men by their money. I don’t like him, and that’s all there is to it.’”

“‘That’s what I like, a woman who doesn’t go in for the latest fashions. Those who diet to stay thin and wind up consumptive. Whereas you…’ ‘Don’t say that, Dona Rozilda…I want you to know that I am following the strictest sort of diet…for a month I have not known what beans taste like…’ Dona Rozilda gave her another critical glance: ‘Nobody would ever think it.’” BRUTAL!