Maias, The (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Yes, well.
Review: Always craving novelty, I was quite interested to read a novel by a guy I'd never heard of from a country about which I know nothing, literature-wise--let alone one which, according to the helpful editors and amazon reviewers, is an all-time classic, to boot. With Zola comparisons, to boot.

So all right, I read it. And now I find myself wondering if it wasn't...well, obscure for a reason. It isn't that The Maias is a bad novel, exactly, but it IS the least-compelling book I've read in a long time. Forget Zola; aside from a few moments of atmospheric vividness, and a nearly non-existent plot structure that could possibly be compared to Nana's, those don't really pan out. Actually, it's manifestly obvious that Eca's big influence was Flaubert--basically, A Sentimental Education, only in Lisbon. And, um, not nearly as good.

I think that the biggest problem is Eca's failure to create a particularly memorable cast of characters. Sure, Flaubert's characters are generally small, fairly trivial people, but they hold our interest nonetheless. Eca's characters, with a few exceptions, simply don't; the cast is large, but most of its members are colorless props without much more than a single personality trait apiece who sort of hover in the background to provide the necessary heads for the novel's numerous interminable set pieces. And the protagonist, Carlos da Maia, is emphatically no Frederic Moreau.

There are things that I liked about The Maias: the opening hundred or so pages, relating the family's history in brief up to Carlos's adulthood where the main narrative begins, engaged me fairly well (Carlos is a helluva lot more interesting as a child than an adult, actually); his great romance, once it begins, renewed my interest to an extent; and said romance's shattering climax (helpfully spoiled by both the back cover copy AND the introduction of this Penguin edition) is appropriately, well, shattering. The ending's also pretty good, if a bit heavy-handed--if you somehow had failed to notice it before, the influence of Flaubert's masterpiece should at least become apparent here. Still, these virtues aren't really enough to drown out the vices in my view; getting all the way through the book was a real act of willpower on my part.

It doesn't help either, of course, that the Penguin edition is so very lackluster. Given that Eca is an unfamiliar writer to most native English-speakers, and that nineteenth-century Portuguese history and culture are likewise generally mysterious, one would think that the editors would have made an extra effort to be helpful, but in this, alas, one would be wrong. The introduction feels very desultory and is almost wholly non-illuminating, and there are virtually no footnotes, and those that do exist (all of them in the second half, which strengthens my theory that the two strangely biography-free translators didn't really collaborate, but rather each translated half, and then they mashed the two together--there's also the way the text abruptly starts abbreviating 'Senhor' at about the halfway mark) seem almost random--there are quite a few references that simply left me clueless. The translation isn't so hot either; while it seems servicable in general, there are occasional word choices and turns of phrase that make you go "guh?," and, as parenthetically noted above, there are some odd inconsistencies. All in all, it seems that the people responsible for assembling this volume got as bored as I did.

I don't know--I certainly don't want to discourage the exploration of other cultures, but if this is really the best that nineteenth-century Portugal has to offer...well. If you absolutely MUST READ a nineteenth-century Portuguese novel, knock yourselves out, I suppose, but if all you're after is something from the last century in a language not traditionally associated with a great literary tradition, I humbly recommend Boleslaw Prus for your consideration.

Thank you for listening.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves More Recognition
Review: Anyone who reads classic literature cannot ignore The Maias. Eca de Queiroz's comparison to Balzac and Tolstoy is spot on. Clearly his best novel, the Maias deals brilliantly with the arocratic nature of people. It is extremely well-written, and reads very quickly. This is a must read for anybody who likes 19th century works.

Rating:
Summary: impressive how little lisbon has changed in 100 years...
Review: it fills me with enormous joy to see how my favourite novel is appreciated around the world. i think eça would be proud of this.

if the maias were a movie (and i'm sure it will be, sooner or later), it would clearly be a "chick-flick"... from this perspective it wouldn't even be very original. the whole romance is actually quite common and not surprising at all (except for the ending, if you're not familiar with eça's own fears and traumas)... what the maias have of spectacularity is the social portrait of portugal in particular of the lisbon society... eça's characters are so plausible and real, even in present days, that one is forced to believe that they are not the product of an ingenious imagination, but the result of a daily observation. this book can surely transport you to lisbon, as it describes the existing mentality in a city that longs for the glamour and importance of a central european capital, like london or paris. what is impressive is that this sense was already prevailing more than a century ago...