cover image The Women of Tijucopapo

The Women of Tijucopapo

Marilene Felinto. University of Nebraska Press, $30 (136pp) ISBN 978-0-8032-1988-5

Following the death of her lover, Risia begins the nine-month journey to her mother's birthplace of Tijucopapo in northern Brazil, a journey that gives shape to Felinto's short, incantatory novel. Risia's early life in the dingy industrial town of Recife was a far cry from what she imagines of the verdant isolation of Tijucopapo. Her downtrodden mother Adelaide, kept a lukewarm watch over her many children, while her husband betrayed her with other women (including her adopted sister). Hating both her brutal father and indifferent mother, Risia grows into a hard-edged street urchin sustained by her dreams of proud dark-skinned Amazons of Tijucopapo. Felinto's staccato prose of repeated scenes, words and phrases, unveils a portrait of great complexity, never more so than when she depicts the vital, sustaining fury of the girlish Risia--a fury that lives on, fed and feared in the woman. Only in her interior dialogue does Risia reveal her fragility, admitting the prickling guilt she still feels over viciously snubbing a childish admirer or crying out for a long-gone neighborhood friend. (Sept.)