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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 869.3
EAN: 9780380898718
ISBN: 0380898713
Label: Avon Books
Manufacturer: Avon Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 390
Publication Date: 1985-09
Publisher: Avon Books
Studio: Avon Books

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: DEPICTION OF HELL IN A CONSTRUCTION PROJECT IN THE AMAZON
Review: This is Marcio Souza's most famous book, in which he creates a romance out of the construction project of the Madeira-Mamoré railway, built in the Amazon in the early 20th century.

Marcio describes in vivid detail the different stories of people somehow connected to the railway, such as the American builders that had worked on the Panama Canal, German and Barbadian low wage, violent workers, an American idealist doctor, the powerful interests behind the building of the railroad both in Brazilian politics and American capitalism. Souza emplys a style reminiscent of Emile Zola in that he appeals to naturalism to describe people's feelings and often uses metaphors of a woman's intimate parts to describe the situation fo the railroad and the main engine, Mad Maria, that is testing the railway.

It is interesting to read the book and then visit the remaining parts of the railway. There are many leftover bridges along the Madeira river that can be visited, and even an engine can be seen in the town of Abunã, which the townspeople say is Mad Maria.

It is a very nice and quick read, but not for those that shy away from violence or darkness. Reminded me a bit of Heart of Darkness, though Mad Maria is written in a much more crude, aggressive style. I highly recommend it, espcially if you will be travelling to the Amazon, as a way to understand the difficulties development has faced in the region.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Death and Capitalism in the Amazon Forest
Review: Márcio Sousa is one of the best brazilian writers of the present days. In this historic novel, the author portrays the construction of the railroad Wood-Mamoré, in the middle of the tropical forest, an ambitious work that involves deaths and corruption, in the beginning of the century XX, in the middle of the peak of the economy of the latex in Brazil. The romance also involves illustrations of the Brazilian politics and fictitious characters, as a native without hands explored as diversion. It's a great novel, touching and unforgettable.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Rambling Epic with an Excess of Local Colour
Review: Almost a hundred years ago the Brazilian Amazon was a place, on the one hand, of exorbitant wealth, based on the extraction of rubber in working conditions that would, on the other hand, come to arouse international concern and condemnation. To help get the rubber to markets overseas, a railway was built in some of the most unpromising territory imaginable--only to be completed just as the bottom fell out of the rubber market and the region's good fortune collapsed utterly.

Márcio Souza, a prolific author who has also written more conventional histories about his native Amazonia, here tells the story of the Madeira-Mamoré railway, or "Mad Maria", in the form of a novel. More accurately, he describes life in one particular work camp along the line of construction, alternating these scenes with others set in Rio de Janeiro where the railway's owner--the historical and scoundrelly venture capitalist Percival Farquhar--schemes to gain the support of a new Brazilian administration.

The scenes in the forest are appropriately dark, even macabre, with workers dying left and right from disease, poor working conditions, and violent conflicts amongst the workers themselves. Souza's main characters here are the head engineer, a cynical Englishman (or does he really have a heart of gold, we are perhaps invited to wonder?); a young American doctor who starts out, at least, as a punctilious idealist; a young Bolivian woman whose adventures lead her to the work camp by chance; and an Indian whose life gets tangled up with that of the whites in a particularly dramatic way.

Souza has the habit of conveying his characters' thoughts and attitudes as much by informing us of their introspection as by what they actually say and do. Here's a parody of his style that may convey the feel: `"Look over there," said the Englishman suddenly. He always felt uneasy when thus taken by surprise, but didn't like to show it to his subordinates.' Yet there is, nevertheless, a great deal of activity in these scenes, some of it violent though not, I believe, gratuitously so. And Souza does a fine job of conveying the sights and sounds of the forest (as I know, having been myself to just this part of the Amazon).

The scenes in Rio present Souza with a different challenge. Now he must convey the sense of a quite different kind of danger, that of intrigue at the very heart of the new administration. If the stakes perhaps seem lower to us than they were in the forest--Farquhar, an American, is at one point threatened with mere deportation when, a chapter or so ago, his workers were graphically described suffering gruesome and fatal diseases--yet, on the other hand, the subtlety of Farquhar's machinations gives rise to some fine moments. There is one brief scene where the American capitalist is called in to meet the Minister of Justice, and it is stretching things only a little to say that we are reminded of Raskolnikov's cat-and-mouse game with the prosecutor in "Crime and Punishment". But this is a high point, and at other times Souza doesn't make it entirely clear just what Farquhar is hoping to achieve. Perhaps the author is constrained by having to include, in these Rio scenes, a greater number of actual figures from history--including, besides Farquhar, the gifted lawyer and politician Ruy Barbosa, and Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, the president of Brazil. As often in this genre, it is hard for the nonspecialist reader to know just how much is factual, but it seems that Souza had much less of a free hand in Rio than he had in the forest.

(Whilst talking of historical accuracy, I have to admit being surprised when, very close to the book's end, one character leaves the town of Porto Velho on foot and arrives at Guajará-Mirim the following day. I've been to both places, and they are, at a guess, well over a hundred miles apart. Souza is, elsewhere, a generally careful writer and this kind of lapse is uncharacteristic.)

At some point, as one could see from the start, the two sets of characters--one in the forest and the other in Rio--get to meet. One feels, though, that Souza has brought them together in the interests of a pattern that he had in mind for the book; there's no inevitability in the encounter, and it passes calmly enough on the whole (although, again, with some striking incidents). By this time the story is almost finished, and the concluding scene has a neatness about it which suggests, once more, that Souza felt this would provide a pleasing symmetry--rather than being a scene driven by the motivations of his characters.

If my comments have come across as somewhat unfavourable, I should add that by and large I enjoyed the book. I don't generally read much fiction (I read this book, as it happens, out of interest through having recently returned from Brazil), so perhaps that influenced my views. The translation is adequate, though not entirely fluent: too often the Portuguese shows through, as in "he commenced to do such-and-such" rather than "he began". Souza's style, though, might be a challenge for any translator.

How, then, can I say that I enjoyed this book? First, for someone who loves the region it is gratifying to read any account of it, fictional or otherwise (though I must say there's nothing here for those readers concerned, primarily, with what they see as environmental issues). Second, Souza expresses from time to time that nationally characteristic pride which alternates between confidence and self-deprecation; I think one could tell, without being told, that this book was written by a Brazilian. There are few enough Brazilian novels that have been translated into English, and we should read them whenever we have the chance.

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