Alentejo Blue

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Portugal knocked on my door twice recently. Once. A friend guided me to Monica Ali on twitter. A second time friends from Nazare shipped me a bottle of Ginja de Obidos. What a lovely way to be cheered up when you are consigned to your couch for a prolonged period of time.

So, while some friends are off eating and drinking, celebrating birthdays on a Saturday night, I am sitting here, sipping a glass of Ginja re-reading Alentejo Blue. And, remembering how lovely Alentejo was.


Monsaraz in Alentejo

The story awoke my desire is to be a foreigner whose place some locals break into so they can swim in the pool. I know, it's a little bourgeois, but…

At the end of The NY Times review the reviewer wants Ali to let the characters out to interact rather than having them silently stew. I am glad she didn't do that. To me it would have seemed very unportuguese for the characters to act out their lives in public. Maybe it's their history of being invaded, maybe it's that until 1974 they lived under a right-wing dictatorship Estado Novo, maybe it's just the friends I made, but to me silently stewing fit the stories perfectly.

Another part of the book that makes me smile is when she talks about older men sitting on benches watching the world go by chatting to each other. Every morning I walked my dog through the town and smiled to the older guys as they solved the worlds problems amoungst themselves. At least that is what I think they were doing. Hard to tell as I didn't understand a lot of what they said to me. Devagar por favor, or slowly please was the phrase I used the most.