I have just finished reading this book and I want to go back, I don't know if in search of “Muda”, or the trail of her presence, the strength of her gaze or the enigmas she carries.
And in my journey as a reader, I am meeting a figure of a woman shrouded in an indecipherable mystery, because it is called LOVE.
This story leaves us sitting in front of an unfinished canvas, it is true, but perfect for that same reason. And we just stare.
Here universes of reality and magic emerge from the ground the protagonist walks on. Trapped by a fate that pursues her and that she pursues. And the trait goes to symbolism, I would say tragic, due to the burden she carries. Fruitful worlds of emotions are drawn, whether in the family scene or in scenes of passion and pain, incomprehension and revolt, even jealousy.
Family stories are repeated. Honour and the unshakeable strength of the blood that runs through the veins and crosses generations. The utopia of rowing against the tide. A destiny to fulfil. A heritage to honour. A trail of love and hope drawing itself on the walls of a house. Touching scenes of innocence and tenderness. Once again, the overwhelming power of family, of love, of the silence which confuses, but protects.
The reader can rest assured that the sublime descends into the narrative and lifts us up to the sublime miracle that only motherhood contains.
And once again, everything, really everything, LOVE manages to rescue.
An intense, very intense, exciting, versatile writing, aesthetically enriched with hints of a pictorial trait appropriate to the physical space of Póvoa de Varzim - the backdrop of episodes collected in the family scene, indoors, or in devastating emotions that only LOVE makes happen.
It would not be amiss to point out some particularly expressive moments (and I transcribe them):
... prisoner of a path ...
... in the flaccidity of her will....
The descriptive technique is refined and suits the narrator's intention. Poetry makes us take flight.
This work is the fruit of a great deal of fruitful inspiration, combined with a knowledge, in loco, of the ethnographic and linguistic reality of the social space in which move the people of the sea and the outsiders, who visit it.