What a stunning debut novel! This narrative spans effortlessly between Brazil and London, and the past and present. It captures the complex decisions often made in secrecy.

This is a short novella that looks at the life of Brazilian GP, Dr Andre Cabral, in the present in 2013 London and a letter that triggers memories and regrets of his 17 year old self in 1980s Brazil. He left Brazil almost 30 years ago and never returned. It could be viewed as a coming of age novel for a young man who had lost his mother in a car accident and whose plastic surgeon father was a cold and distant figure for whom he worked after school. For him, he confidently expects the world to open up and embrace him and all lies at his feet, he can be all that he wants to be. He comes from an affluent background and he is white. He parties, has similar teenage friends who are bored and lie on the pure white beaches expecting to be entertained and are careless of others.

However, Andre is obsessed with and in lust with Luana, the daughter of Rita, the black family maid. Family secrets and what happens next is to haunt him through the years and have repercussions he does not expect. The middle aged Andre is a more developed, careful and introspective man. The letter he receives from Luana has him withdrawing from his family, placing it in jeopardy. He gets another letter that has him on a journey into his past. The novel moves back and forth in time between two shattering times of his life. There is a technicolor vibrancy associated with Brazil and Andre's memories of his youth there whilst London is leached of colour, grey and introspective. The language is beautiful, and made reading this a joy. This is a tale of race, class and the power that resides in being male. It is about memories, and the carelessness with which the young can treat others. It is a story of passion and tragedy. Thanks to Scribner for an ARC.

This book was hugely engaging. It brings you to Brazil, to the heat and the warm sand on Ipanema beach. In this setting we are introduced to the class system in Brazil and the coming of age of a young man. In ways the story isn't original.. History is full of stories of servants and employers having sexual and loving relationships and of babies being born from these unions. As the story unfolded I felt my loyalties switching between characters, leading to the confusion that often occurs, where love and morality are in question. Luiza Sauma's telling of this story, linking past and present, England and Brazil with different family dynamics all combine to make this an emotional and warming read.

The setting is both exotic and sombre: steamy Rio de Janeiro and a jungle town in the north, with the brown, endless Amazon as backdrop in the 1980s and London of today, with its cold and leaky skies. The seventeen-year-old André lives in Rio with his plastic surgeon father, his seven-year-old brother Thiago, attended to by their two empregados (maids) Rita, mother to the teenage, Luana, who helps with the domestic duties. Their mother has recently died tragically in a car accident, and grief ripples through their lives.

The novel opens when forthysomething André opens a letter from Luana, long since gone from his life, who begins by telling him about her life in Brazil. André is now a GP, separated from his English wife and the mother of two teenagers himself. The letters force him to confront his past, to re-remember the events of that long-ago year in Brazil which was to determine the course of the rest of his life.

While there are brief passages set in the present-day London, most of the novel takes place in 1980s Rio and a brief Christmas in Belem, a jungle city on the Amazon, where he and Luana tried to ignore the heat between them.

The novel is lush – the setting of the jungle city and the equally hot and pulsating, but crime-ridden Rio are lovingly evoked and described. André recalls: “Now I find myself thinking, several times a day, about the green wildness of the trees on any street in Ipanema. Thin vines snaking around telephone lines. The sting of the Atlantic in my eyes. The people, their breezy manners.”

This is a city of favelas and luxury apartment buildings – such as the one André and his family live in; a city of desperate poverty alongside wealth, the surest breeding ground of crime. A place where it is quite normal for a middle-class family to be able to afford two maids, for example. The descriptions of the mores and lifestyle of the Brazilians in the 1980s was fascinating to read about – perfectly representing a divided city with its class tensions.

This is a coming of age story – a story of teenagers living the life that an accident of birth has dealt them. Luana, taken out of school, and waiting on André and his brother and father, and André knowing he will soon go to university to be a doctor like his father. And as with all teenagers, there is confusion, lust and desire, the abrupt, sometimes awkward thrust into adulthood with all the pain and mistakes that implies. A world of privileged teenagers spending afternoons at the beach – not very interesting teenagers at that – is subtly contrasted with the life the maid Luana is leading.

It is about memory, and the suppression of memory, and about how a single event can cause a life to shatter or harden and solidify, and how impossible it is to supress pain and secrets, eventually they will inevitably burst into the open. But the effects of secrets long suppressed can be poisonous. “Luana was from a different time and place, so far from London in 2013. More suited to dreams,” André says early on, and we witness his memories and then the ultimate almost redemption from them.

André as a teenager isn’t particularly perceptive, as privileged and as unaware as the friends who surround him. The middle-aged André is much more interesting, more introspective and paradoxically, more damaged. I wanted to know more about this older André. An interesting read, a vivid, evocative story that holds attention for the most part.
The coming of age section of the story is a little slack, and events take a long time to develop. I also would have preferred more ending, so to speak, the events revealed at the end of the novel are momentous and there’s certainly more story there.

An immense read which I couldn't put down. And I wasn't expecting the twist!

Part bildungsroman and part contemporary fiction this book was a tour de force. The way Sauma writes about Brazil is like both a love letter and a Dear John letter at the same time. Incredibly well written and disquieting at times.

The underlying story here is that of the empregadas, the maid/housekeeper/nanny combo that were employed by so many of the richer Brazilians. It was both interesting and shocking to read about the society class levels in that respect.

This is definitely not a feel good book, but it is a wholeheartedly captivating read and an outstanding first novel. I hope to read much more from Luiza Sauma.

Short novel about man living in London looking back 30 years to his teen years in Brazil. A well-written story but the plotting was underwhelming.

This is a heart-wrenchingly beautiful novel set in London and Brazil. Listless teen, Andre falls for the help's daughter, Luana, which of course has been strictly forbidden by his surgeon father. As the book opens, a middle-aged Andre receives a letter from her which throws us into a whirlwind of questions; as we go back and forth in time and place answers are revealed and secrets abound. With lovely prose and vivid descriptions, Sauma transports us into magical locales and renders a story that will stay with me long after the last page.