Novel set in USA, VIETNAM and JAPAN
A novel of melancholy set in RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
22nd January 2025
Glória by Victor Heringer, a novel of melancholy set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Translated by Sophie Lewis and James Young
Glória by Victor Heringer is a clever, quirky, almost perverse, book which tells the story of three Brazilian brothers who are doomed to die of heartbreak. The author quickly establishes the unusual nature of the book by telling us that he has been asked to ghostwrite it by one of the brothers, Daniel. Daniel is the book’s narrator and he tells us of his childhood and growing up in Rio, his family history and the adult lives and careers of his brothers.
The book’s premise is that without exception the cause of death of the Alencar Costa e Oliveira family members has been acute melancholy. Early in the book, the brothers witness this at first hand. Their jovial and close-knit family, who are always laughing and joking, even when things aren’t funny, are bereaved and it is clear to them that heartbreak was the cause. They hope to use humour as an antidote to what they see as pre-ordained misery and subsequent death. If I tell you that “God is a stammerer” is the joke mostly likely to set them off laughing, you will understand how personal humour can be!
The author’s style is eccentric, with little “tics”, such as writing “etc and et cetera” frequently. He mocks characters for being pleonastic, which is where I began to consider that the author suffered from the same malady – the book would make a wonderful short story, but it is hard to sustain the joke for an entire novel. At one point he (Heringer or Daniel? I’m no longer sure!) says, “Benjamin soon lost interest in the lives of his ancestors”, and I’m afraid that I began to feel that way too.
About halfway through the book I stopped to read some biographical detail about the author, Heringer. The prize-winning writer died just before his 30th birthday, “in an apparent act of self-defenestration”. Returning to the novel, I discovered that a character met the same fate, falling from the family’s apartment building to the street below. Such is the bizarre nature of the book that I began to question what was reality, and whether some perverse kind of cause and effect had occurred. Reality versus virtual existence is one of the book’s themes, after all, with one of the brothers, Ben, conducting much of his life in an online forum where his girlfriend shares the name of his real-life crush, Paula.
Toward the end of the book, the author/narrator says in a footnote that he hopes that “the reader is emerging from this novel… like someone leaving the cinema without understanding what’s funny about the comedy he has just seen.” Without doubt Glória is a cleverly-constructed and witty book, which is very enjoyable in parts. If my review hasn’t put you off entirely, I do recommend it: it is unlikely to be like anything else you’ve read.*
*although it did remind me a little of Maryse Condé’s book, The Gospel According to the New World, which has some parallel themes.
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