clueless
New Member
I am only half way through Eça de Queiroz’s novel, but I could not wait until the end to share my enthusiasm.
This was Eça’s first novel, which he published in the 1870s but then corrected and reprinted several times. I am reading the last version, published in the 1890s and it is hard to believe that it was writing over a hundred years ago. Obviously the setting is the 19th Century, but the expressions, attitudes, and characters’ manners seem so natural and fresh. Characterisation is brilliant too, with even minor characters having their own individual voices.
The novels opens when a priest dies, leaving a vacancy for a vicar. It continues with the story of Amaro, whose parents, servants to a Countess, died when he was a young child. The Countess brought him up and left a legacy in her will to pay for his education so he would become a priest. When he is appointed to the vacancy in Leiria and arrives to his new, comfortable lodgings, he thinks his problems are over, but he is young and so is his landlady’s daughter.
Amaro’s ‘crime’ is just one example, and a very tiny one, of the corruption in the Church and the Portuguese society at the time, which are shown in the novel from the first pages.
This was Eça’s first novel, which he published in the 1870s but then corrected and reprinted several times. I am reading the last version, published in the 1890s and it is hard to believe that it was writing over a hundred years ago. Obviously the setting is the 19th Century, but the expressions, attitudes, and characters’ manners seem so natural and fresh. Characterisation is brilliant too, with even minor characters having their own individual voices.
The novels opens when a priest dies, leaving a vacancy for a vicar. It continues with the story of Amaro, whose parents, servants to a Countess, died when he was a young child. The Countess brought him up and left a legacy in her will to pay for his education so he would become a priest. When he is appointed to the vacancy in Leiria and arrives to his new, comfortable lodgings, he thinks his problems are over, but he is young and so is his landlady’s daughter.
Amaro’s ‘crime’ is just one example, and a very tiny one, of the corruption in the Church and the Portuguese society at the time, which are shown in the novel from the first pages.
