A Cidade e as Serras is another classic Portuguese novel, and Eça is the quintessential Portuguese novelist. I want to compare him to Dickens, because of the approving nods and expressions of slight amazement that I get when I tell Portuguese colleagues that I'm reading his books. That isn't to say that his style, or subject matter, are like Dickens - although they both date from the 19th century (close enough...). Perhaps unlike Dickens, it is very normal for Portuguese young people to claim Eça is their favourite author. And after really getting 'stuck in', I can understand why.
A Cidade e as Serras was the novel Eça was working on at the time of his death, in 1900. The narrator, José Fernandes, tells the story of his friend Jacinto, from the time of their youth, spent in Paris, to middle age. Halfway through the book - without giving too much away - Jacinto's situation is transformed, when he moves from Paris to the rural tranquility of northern Portugal. He leaves behind the ennui and complexity of his Paris life, gaining the simplicity of an idyllic, and bucolic, existence.
Told like that, the story doesn't seem to hold much appeal - a pastoral fantasy of the urban elite. But I don't think it's like that at all. For me, the real joy of the novel is in Eça's wry commentary on pretty much everything. Both Jacinto and Zé Fernandes, the narrator, are by turns laughable and extremely sympathetic characters. Eça has a great knack for casting characters in different lights by showing the various situations they find themselves in. By the end of the novel, I really felt I knew these people.
As ever in my reading, I couldn't help noticing how Eça filters the story through the mouthpiece of Zé Fernandes, although he gives the appearance of telling an unedited version of his and Jacinto's lives. I was intrigued by the way Zé Fernandes glosses over any details of his own existence, which in some cases is frankly ridiculous - a year can pass in a matter of sentences when he's away from Jacinto, but an hour or two with Jacinto can take up dozens of pages.
All in all, I really enjoyed A Cidade e as Serras. Eça's writing is supposed to be 'difficult', and in some ways it is - for example, his descriptive language is very rich in unusual vocabulary, making it harder for a non-native speaker to understand. But in other respects, the construction of the novel makes it easy to get involved in the narrative - who can resist such compelling characters, or the immense variety of backgrounds and atmospheres?
I'm really excited to read more of Eça's work in the near future. I'd definitely recommend A Cidade e as Serras to anyone who likes a good, solid 19th century novel.
(NB this post accidentally stayed as a draft for about two weeks after it was written. Another book post is coming soon!)
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