Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon

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Summary: MY DAUGHTER'S MIDDLE NAME IS GABRIELA BECAUSE OF THIS BOOK
Review: Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon is Brazilian Nobel Laureate Jorge Amado's masterpiece. When it was made into a TV movie in Brazil, the entire country -- including the government--- stopped to watch. I read Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon for the first time 20 years ago, with the result noted in the headline above. Gabriela... is a spell-binding romance and tale of frontier life in Brazil. In 1925, the town of Ilheus burst into prosperity & modernity as cacao plantations gobbled up the land. Cacao barons built nouveau riche monstrosities and cultivated fine airs. And the mulatto girl, Gabriela, filthy, starving and dressed in rags, wandered into town with a stream of others escaping famine. Just as Nacib the Arab loses his cook. What would his Cafe do with no cook? They find each other. Gabriela, bathed and clothed, is a beauty who has every man in town panting. Also-- she's a great cook. Soon, the Cafe is hopping and Nacib is a mess. Can he hold on to her? A melange of political bosses, concubines, proper wives and daughters. Cheating wives and scandal. Boredom in the heat. And the beautiful Gabriela and her food moving through it like a smile. When I read this book 20 years ago, I loved it as a romance. My recent reading impressed me as a woman's book. Amado draws the lives and options of women in Brazilian society at this time very clearly, and shows how one resourceful woman managed to be herself. The book has the flowery language of Latin writing. It's author is older-- I believe that he died not too long ago. So it feels a bit antique. And very exotic.

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Summary: Bountiful! A masterpiece!
Review: Gabriela, Cloves Cinnamon is simply bountiful. I bought this book in anticipation of a business trip to Brazil, and found that it was a wonderful story rich with political intrigue, well developed characters and a lush setting that served my initial purpose - as a microcosm through which to gain a little insight into the Brazilian psyche. It is a literary masterpiece with a strong prose / narrative style that prevents it being too 'heavy' a read. It total avoids trite characterizations and predictability in the plot. I am going to follow-up this with reading other of Jorge Amado's work, and buy the movie based upon "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" for their own literary value, as opposed to simply as examples of Brazilian / Latin American literature / film.

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Summary: Love in the time of change
Review: Hidden behind a fabulous love story, this book contains an acute and profound analysis of social change: what progress, prosperity and civilization do to mores, habits and the way people see the world. Ilheus (look up the pictures in the internet, the place is very beautiful) is a small city on the coast of Brazil, between Bahia and Rio. The cacao crop is making many of the people in Ilheus richer and richer, and so new people come from different parts of Brazil and other countries, to find work and share the prosperity. The city and its surroundings have a history of violence and bloodshed, due to the bitter fights to get the best lands and control production and trade. The conquerors of these lands are called "colonels", the old barons, strongmen used to resolving disputes at gunpoint. "Democracy" is understood as having the same puppets winning all the time, assuring political control for the bosses. One should note that these guys are not simply crooks and killers. They are extremely audacious and brave people who used to have a point in behaving the way they did.

But times are changing. From Rio has come a man called Mundinho Falcao, a young, entrepreneurial, modern kind of man, who has brought new ideas and habits (like bathing in the sea). Ilheus has a problem: the entrance to the port is blocked by a sand barrier, which makes it impossible for big boats to get in, and so most of the revenue from the cacao trade goes to Bahia's capital. Mundinho, a man with strong political connections, is pushing for the beginning of works to remove this obstacle and bring more money to the town. This, of course, is a threat to the colonels' control of politics, and Mundinho is an ambitious man.

Meanwhile, there is this guy Nacib, a man from Syrian descent, who owns the most popular bar in Ilheus. On the day the novel begins, old habits make a big shock in the town's life, as everybody wakes up to learn that colonel Jesuino has discovered in bed his wife and a dentist, and he has shot them both to dead, as a man should do (at least in Ilheus). But Nacib has other things to worry about, for his cook has left for good, on the eve of an important meal he has to serve. After many tribulations, Nacib goes to the "slave market", the place where destitute people from the poor inlands come to look for work. He finds Gabriela, a filthy young woman who says she can cook. After bathing, Gabriela turns out to be an extremely beautiful and sexy girl who becomes the object of desire for every man in town, and her cooking makes for big success at the bar. In order to keep her, and after falling madly in love with her, Nacib decides to marry her. The development of their love is very interesting, erotic and entertaining, and at some point it will become a new symbol of new habits and social mores.

The novel examines, through stories and things that happen in the town, many aspects of societal change, how progress affects old interests and brings about some violence, the kind of violence that signals the withering of the old regime and the arrival of new ways to do things, from politics to falling in love to dealing with infidelity.

Don't waste any more time: this is a gorgeous novel, full of humor, erotism, violence and politics. Characters are extremely well developed, all of them reminding the reader of people he/she has met in real life, especially if one has lived in a small city.

Plus it is very exotic, with a wildly tropical scenery. Amado is a great writer with many things to say and people to invent.

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Summary: Simply extraordinary.
Review: Historicaly situated at the late 1920's in Brazil, this masterpiece tells a story about the paradox among ingenuity and passion. From all points of view, this perfectly structured argument, lines up love, prejudice and social evolution, using the obsession for progress - sign of those times - as a key to develop the principal love argument of the book with such an extaordinary narrative and descriptive manners, that you could feel the essence of the city, or even recreate its architectural and urban display. This is the kind of books that makes you think "how comes I never read it in high school" but thankfully it is never late to enjoy a book like this.

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Summary: A 'must read' if you going to Brazil!
Review: I think that should be the title of this book (and all of the other Amado books I have read). While the story becomes interesting after a while, I get bored reading about how beautiful the women of Bahia are (although, it's true they are!). The beginning of the book is full of descriptions of old men and young beautiful women, which as a women is not only boring in such quantities, but also unappealing. It may be a little difficult for some women to laugh off, the way the author does, the social inequities of women that occurred at that time.

That being said, the story does pick up after Gabriella comes into her own. After the first 1/3 of the book, I couldn't put it down - Gabriella is a great character! She'll make it worth reading Amado's sometimes borish descriptors.

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Summary: Hot, Spicy and Delicious
Review: Jorge Amado takes us back to the mid-1920's in this deliciously enchanting novel, when the cacao kings ruled in the Brazilian backlands, conflicts were solved by gunfire, and a husband was expected to defend his honor by killing an adulterous wife and her lover. There are two parallel and occasionally intertwining plots going on; one is the battle between the old forces that want to maintain the city of Ilhéus as it has been for decades, sleepy and backwards; and the people who want the city to join the 20th century by encouraging international trade and culture. To the old guard, this is anathema; open the city to trade and all kinds of new ideas will rear their ugly heads. The second plot involves the Syrian bartender Nacib Saab; poor Nacib has been deserted by his cook on the eve of catering an important party for the town's upper crust. What to do? Nacib ventures over to the part of town where desperate migrant workers fleeing the drought in Brazil's northern provinces will work for a pittance (it underscores their desperation and devastation that this place is called the "slave market") and finds Gabriela, a young mulatto woman, filthy, dirt-encrusted, but willing to work for next to nothing, and Nacib needs a cook. But in Gabriela, he gets more than he ever bargained for. Once she's washed free of the dirt and dust she is absolutely gorgeous; her cooking wakes visions of paradise, and soon she has most of the men in town, married and single, panting after her. No way is Nacib, going to share this treasure he picked up off the dump heap; he wants her all to himself. But the only way he can have her all to himself is by marriage. Which is fine with him; but Gabriela is like an exquisite wild flower; once you pick it and put it in a vase, it withers and dies. Gabriela loves being Nacib's cook and mistress; she hates being Mrs. Saab, having to mind so many P's and Q's. She doesn't want to be a great lady; she just wants to be Gabriela.

Not only does the book have two great plots, it also has some terrific characters: the old reactionary Ramiro Bastos and his wastrel playboy son Tonico; Malvina Tavares, .who refuses to accept her mandated destiny of cloistered young woman and later resigned wife, and makes a destiny of her own; Mundinho Falçao, who arrives in Ilhéus bring the winds of change which are about to sweep out the fusty old order; Dr. Mauricio Caires, the reactionary lawyer fulminating hellfire and damnation; Colonel Amâncio Leal, another old reactionary who realizes it's time for a change; and a host of others. But by far the most fascinating character is Gabriela herself, innocent, enchanting, full of the sheer joy of life. It's a wonderful read, and the excellent translation by James L. Taylor and William Grossman from the original Portuguese into English does full credit to this marvelous book.

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Summary: Boosterism in Brazil
Review: North American writers have poured forth a plentitude of books on the 'Twenties. From that era of tulmutuous fortune-making, Prohibition and "boosterism", many tales and no end of scathing criticism have been derived. "Boosterism" was the phrase applied by businessmen touting their communities as forward looking, progressive, expanding. Government at all levels, in their eyes, existed solely for the purpose of providing what is now called "infrastructure" to assist in "development". Underlying this promotional attitude were the hidden lives of the people. Jorge Amado demonstrates that the phenomenon wasn't restricted to the North. In this bizarre novel of a Brazilian community, he portrays the clash of tradition and "progress" in a different environment.

Gabriela, a migrant worker, arrives in Ilheus. A town braced by the sea and extensive cacao plantations, it was founded in violence and is sustained by fear. The skirmishes that created the plantations left an oligarchy of "colonels" dominating the society and politics of the region. Honour is the rule, backed by a tradition extending back to Iberian aristocrats. Allegiances are fixed and endure long. Challenges to the Establishment are met with swift, violent response. Gabriela, originally a distant viewer of these clashes, is ultimately and intimately drawn into them. Amado's picture of this rigid social milieu and how it effects the innocent, demonstrates the power of money and character against tradition. The conclusion is anything but foregone, as he depicts the plots, subterfuge and ferment resulting from the jousting contenders.

The challenger is Mundinho Falcaho, young, ambitious and full of fight. He deplores the favouritism government shows to other communities. He wants "progress" and improvements for Ilheus. The pivotal element couldn't be more mundane - a sandbar in the harbour blocks the entry of ocean-going ships. Around this issue, Amado builds a story of intrigue, power manipulation and, amazingly, fierce and tender romance. In this stark tale, the characters are flexible and learn to adapt. The "Turk", a Syrian-born bar owner, learns how to evade the code imposed on betrayed husbands. The humour, and this story is lightly told, is muted - as is the tragedy. There's little to laugh at, here, but no tears should flow.

Amado, once a Nobel nominee, would appear dated today. That shouldn't detract from the power of his prose. His portrayal of women would bring down scorn from a segment of today's society, but he is depicting a distant time and place. Such criticisms should be curtailed unless you've lived that life. He was a keen observer of humanity, exposing strengths and frailties with equal skill. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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Summary: Ah, L'amour
Review: So you won't be disappointed!
What about discovering the rich world of Latin America, a love story, a political history, and a psychological mayhem? all of it whilst you are enjoying a beautiful book, an amazing novel and a really great style of writing.

Gabriella may be the best of the best you may read as love story, and as "Latin American literature". You will plunge -so easily- in this widely open world of colors, sounds and creatures. The pulse is already there, in all the characters, and everybody is so deeply living: politic is rotten, love is hard, sex is wanted and our human complications are so silly.

Reading this book is a unique experience; it will always make you feel better... even after the 3rd time!!

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Summary: The very best of Jorge Amado
Review: This book delves into the culture and history of Bahia, one of the most celebrated parts of Brazil. It is one of Amado's best known works, if not the best one. The story depicts Gabriela, a sensous free spirited woman who migrates from famine to the city of Ilheus, where her story meshes with the city's story to form a great mixture. Gabriela works as a cook, and torments the hearts of men with her sensous and pure nature, while she delicately touches the revolving life of the city.

The book also depicts with great detail the culture of the region, with special focus on the food. If you have ever been to Bahia, you will know how unique the tastes there are. This book leaves such a taste in the mouth. If you are planning to go on tourism to the Brazilian Northeast, this book should help raise the anticipation level.

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Summary: You will feel as if you have been to Brazil
Review: This is my favorite novel by my favorite South American writer. The scents, sounds and scenery of Brazil seem to spring from the pages of this book. If it were nothing more that a travel guide, it would be worth four or five stars. I promise that after you read this, you will be consummed with the desire to visit Brazil and sample its cooking.

However, this story is more. The best way I can describe it is to say that it is Capra-esque. A beautiful young woman with a peasant background becomes the object of adoration of a businessman. He tries to civilize her and in the process almost destroys that which makes herso sublime. If this was written by Thomas Hardy and the titole character was named Tess, this book would end tragically. However, this is the world of Amado. I do not want to give away too much of the plot, but I will say that Amado loves his characters and has a great faith in the ability of people to change and grow.