Alentejo Blue

by Monica Ali

A new collection of short stories set in the Alentejo province of Portugal features a range of colorful characters, linked by a vivid sense of place and time, including Teresa, a beautiful young girl from the village engaged to a suitable man, who yearns to see the world, and Vasco, a caf‚ owner who is losing business to the new Internet caf‚ down the road. By the author of Brick Lane. 75,000 first printing.

Genres: Fiction, Portugal, Short Stories, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, 21st Century

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 20, 2006

About the author

Monica Ali is a British writer of Bangladeshi origin. She is the author of Brick Lane, her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2003. Ali was voted Granta's Best of Young British Novelists on the basis of the unpublished manuscript.

She lives in South London with her husband, Simon Torrance, a management consultant. They have two children, Felix (born 1999) and Shumi (born 2001).

She opposes the British government’s attempt to introduce the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. She discusses this in her contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays published by Penguin in 2005.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is more a series of short stories with recurring and interconnected characters than it is a novel. Here in a tiny town in Portugal, the poorest province in the poorest nation in (Western) Europe, are assembled a cast of characters who are locals, tourists and émigrés, mainly from Britain.



One would think the locals couldn't wait to leave this abandoned corner of the earth, and some are trying to leave. But one local has returned from a decade as a cook and bartender in the Portuguese emigrant community in Provincetown, Massachusetts and he has no intention of ever leaving his Portuguese village again.

One of the other émigrés is an alcoholic author. One émigré family from Britain that features a pot-head father, a lost, clueless son, a promiscuous mother and a promiscuous underage daughter, is so dysfunctional they could star in their own TV reality show. The underlying theme seems to be you can run but you can't hide -from yourself - even in a small rural village in a foreign country.



The Blue in the title, (from the blue in the Portuguese azulejos tiles) is a give-away - these are depressing stories filled with angst and anomie. One could argue that depressing small-town stories constitute their own genre: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson; Village by Robert McAlmon; Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, and Tales from the Mountain by Miguel Torga - also set in Portugal - all come to mind. Ali gives us depressing but short, brilliant stories. But the final chapter featuring a "feel-good" village festa can't erase all that comes before and seems a bit disingenuous.

The author, a native of Bangladesh, living in London, shows us personally as well as by her characters just how globalization is impacting even remote corners of the world.

top photo of the village of Marvao in Alentejo from 123rf.com
bottom photo of the village of Monsaraj in Alentejo from istockphoto.com

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked Monica Ali’s debut novel ‘Brick Lane’ but I was worried before I started reading this. It often happens that writers who had a popular debut novel decide to stick to the formula and produce book-club-riendly watered down versions of their debut.

Luckily, that’s not the case here. Monica Ali did not want to be locked writing endless ‘sari & curry’ family sagas. She broke free and did something very brave, that is, completely departed from her debut.

‘Azuelejo Blue’ is more of a short story collection disguised as a novel which takes place around a small village in Portugal amongst ex-pats, tourists and locals. This sort of structure is a difficult thing to pull off, and I see from reviews that it didn’t appeal to many people. Personally, I thought it was it quite well done.

Monica Ali trusts her reader enormously. She doesn’t explain anything and leaves everything for you to figure out. There is no telling here, just showing. Yes, occasionally it can be confusing but ultimately very satisfying. I would take this over any book whose author assumes I am a halfwit.

The cast is very rich and diverse, the writing is superb, and Ali is an extremely imaginative author which is one of the main characteristic I look for in a writer.

It wasn’t a perfect book, I felt that Ali should have put more oomph in it but I give her well deserved four stars and I know she has that perfect book in her. (I am not sure if it is that Diana book though).

[Amanda B · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 🌟

[Weinz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible book. If possible I would have given it zero stars. It felt like the author had all these characters in her head and just spit out random thoughts about each character forgetting that the reader didn't know. Most of the time it seemed like she forgot there was a reader at all. It was a painful read. No identifying characters, no one you cared about, no themes, no real story line, no climax, no ENDING. She just stopped writing.

This proves, once again, awards never guarantee a good read and a previous "best seller" does not guarantee another. The fact that someone actually published this frightens me for the future.

[Joao · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable book about the “Blue Alentejo” which is located in the Portuguese South West Region. It's called blue because most of the local houses in this part of Alentejo are white with blue stripes. I also reckon that is called blue because of the fantastic blue skies and the sea which is not far from these market towns illustrated in the book. The story take place in a small village which is called "Mamarrosa", however this name is imaginary there is no such place in Alentejo, I have done some local research and I reckon that "Mamarrosa" is reporting to the village of Santa Clara-a-Velha, county council of Odemira, however I’m not 100% sure! but by the description should be this place as it is not far from “Corte Brique” a hamlet mentioned in the book , it has a white and blue a church a school a “casa do povo” and a café…
I really enjoyed the way the author reported the peculiar living of this town, the book catches some particular issues of this rural community, sometimes very comical. Being a Portuguese and knowing this rural region quite well it is interesting to analyse the differences between the Portuguese culture in this case manly the rural culture and the British one. I was amused by the author reflection on religion made through the characters, beautiful done! Anyway Portugal is still a country of faith, although this does not mean necessarily Church devotion, by the way abortion is already legal in this country!...

[Filipa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had really high hopes for this book having really enjoyed Brick Lane but I can honestly say I hated it, I really did...if I could give it zero stars I would.
The author says at the end that the book is fiction but you can at least research where the main village of your book is located! Mamarrosa is in the north, nowhere near Alentejo. At one point the character goes to Lindoso from Mamarrosa and the next day to Ourique, these are on opposite sides of the country, it's ridiculous! Then the author takes the trouble to write certain words in Portuguese, like culinary terms, but for bacalhau she writes salted cod! The name of a character is written in Spanish rather than Portuguese (it's Gonçalo not Gonzalo!), it's azulejo, not azelejo. At one point, one of the final characters, his name is Huw but then the author writes Hugh...The book has no sense and it just looks like she was asked by her publishers to write something and just slap-dashed a book together after spending minimal amount of time in Portugal or even researching it!
When I first started I was really intrigued, it looked like it would be about fascism and Portugal's time during the dictatorship revolving around 2 gay men during the high time of fascist persecution but then it shifts into present time with stereotypical characters, completely uninteresting and unworthy of character development. It was a real let down and I don't think I'll be picking up another book by the author.
I don't have the habit of writing reviews so the fact I have done says a lot.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I was concerned that this was going to be the Portuguese equivalent of those books about someone spending a year in Tuscany where it's always sunny and the locals are charming and colourful, so this gets bonus points for being more interesting than that. On the other hand it's *very* episodic; basically a collection of short stories. Characterisation and evocation of the landscape is strong, and Ali's prose is a pleasure to read, but I was disappointed that she spent more time on the rather sordid goings-on in the expat community than on the locals. Issues relating to Portuguese history and emigration are touched upon but I'd have appreciated more on this.

[Bachyboy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this but all through the book, I struggled to see the point of it. Set in small town Portugal, the book moves from character to character to character and I never got a grasp on the storyline, nor did I like any of the characters.

[Bastiaan Víctor De Groote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad book, but not my cup of tea. Did enjoy the innkeeper deciding wether to eat a piece of cake for ten pages, and the couple getting two different existential crisises after visiting a skull-and-bones-chapel.

[Abril Camino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ufff, me ha costado, la verdad. Lo elegí porque estoy enamorada de la zona en la que se ambienta y decidí leerlo en un viaje al Alentejo. Es una recopilación de relatos cortos con personajes entremezclados en un pequeño pueblo ficticio, pero me ha resultado demasiado fragmentario, de ritmo muy lento y con una visión demasiado negativa de todo lo que se narra. Las tres estrellas son en parte subjetivas porque cualquier cosa que huela a Alentejo me emociona y en parte objetivas porque Monica Ali tiene un estilo maravilloso e incluso los libros suyos que se me atragantan tienen eso de positivo.

[Zoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is perhaps inevitable that comparisons will be made with Ali's excellent 'Brick Lane', which is a shame, as Alentejo Blue is clearly not in the same class. The split narrative works well to produce a fairly fragmented text which, one assumes, is representative of the Alentejo itself - neither traditionally Portuguese, nor a tourist mecca, the region is problematically defined by its constantly changing population. I can't help but think, however, that more could have been made of the links between the narrative threads, and their respective characters. There is no sudden moment of epiphany where the characters and their accounts suddenly collide; rather the chapters, and characters, languidly merge in and out of one another, and produce a somewhat unremarkable text.
This is a novel where nothing much really happens, which wouldn't be a problem, but for the style and tone Ali adopts. There is something profoundly lacking from this text that was so obviously abundant in her literary debut. The characters come across as mere caricatures, and so it is often difficult to feel any compassion, or anything other than indifference, towards them. The narrative is often awkward and clunky, and the zest for (literary) language that made Brick Lane so readable is not evident here.
Really disappointing.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

It really pisses me off the way Goodreads keeps effing up my reviews. I have GOT to remember to select all + copy from now on. I type out this thoughtful lovely review and it's gone. That REALLY vexes me.

Regardless, I thought this was a lovely book. Quick read. I stumbled over the first chapter simply because I didn't have a good idea as to what was going on (it took place in the present lapsed to the past and returned to the present).

Being from a small rural town, I could relate to all the characters. To the churchgoing gossips, to the ones with big city dreams longing longing to escape the rural towns they are from. Where the most there is to do when you are a kid is swim in the dirty lake, skip rocks, wonder to creeks in the woods, hunt for crawdads. I think other people may find the mundanity of the day to day lives insufferably boring thus find this book insufferably boring..

[Maddie Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a challenging read. I started reading without knowing anything about it, but it’s written as a bunch of short stories with interconnected(ish) characters, and I really had to pay attention and work to understand the connections.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably not a book for everyone, but I loved every moment of it. It is the sort of book you could study because it is complex in its thoughts and ideas. The villagers were all well drawn characters with whom you could empathise . This is the poorest village in Portugal. Their lives are not based on money. They know developers could take over the place and it is that juxtaposition of a centuries old village against a developer takeover which makes you think. You know these people do not have enough health care. You know they could live in better houses. That is not the point. Tourists come to study nature and value the beautiful views and uncluttered life. It becomes a story about what makes a meaningful life. Is it the structured one we have driven by economic necessity and profit or is it the one where you do not have amenities but plenty to keep you busy and occupied. It is more than that, though. You could read this book on so many levels and there are some excellent social observations and insights. What is life? What is living? Should we be developing everywhere? Ought there be allowances for lifestyle choices or are we to be market driven and then history and heritage lost? All of this is covered easily and and in a warm, sensitive way.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ali's second novel is vastly unlike her first, "Brick Lane," and I think this is why so many of her readers were disappointed. "Brick Lane" is one of my favorite books, and while I don't think "Alentejo Blue" compares, I still admire Ali for trying something so different. It really shows her range of writing and her desire not to be pigeonholed as a certain type of writer.

It was difficult to get into the first few chapters--the voices were so dissonant and the characters didn't seem connected in any way--but as the novel progressed, I began to see how the characters and their stories weaved together in a mostly natural--not too contrived--way. "Alentejo Blue" is the story of the desire to leave a place in the quest for something better, for the British tourists who escape to rural Portugal and the locals who want to leave for England or remember their days in America fondly.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Monica Ali's "Brick Lane" and maybe it's not fair to compare the two books, but I had high expectations for this one. The premise of this novel is great - it is set in a small village in Portugal. Have visited Portugal a couple of years ago, and loving that country, I was drawn to this book. The review says it looks at the lives of the locals in this village of Alentejo Blue and the interaction of these people with tourists who visit and other people who are passing through.

So, what went wrong? I don't know exactly, except that I simply got lost in the story and couldn't figure out what was going on. The change of scenes or story lines got so vague between the transitions and the introduction of new people all the time got so confusing. The first 50 pages were O.K. but then when it got too difficult to figure out, I lost interest.

[Jayne Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delighted to find this in the second-hand shop, having really enjoyed Brick Lane. This is more varied, following the various inhabitants of a small community in Portugal - Portuguese and ex-pat. Unfortunately it's harder work to read - some of the chapters were so opaque I still haven't got a clue what was going on. Others featured characters drawn with such skill and wit (the Potts family, particularly, the worst types of ex-pat all rolled into one squalid mass) that it was a shame to have to leave them to move on to someone else. Having finished the book I'm not really left with a feeling of wholeness or a central message. It read like a series of short stories only loosely connected - a bit like Trainspotting but not as funny.

[Jasper Le Comte · Rating 1 out of 5]

Personally, I thought it was uninspired, lacking in focus and lacking in style. Ali constantly feels the need to remind us we're in Portugal by mentioning cork oaks every five sentences so you'd remember it takes place in Portugal, which isn't easy to forget. I found the characters boring and forgettable and the stories lacking any sort of narrative meaning that I could pick up on. Glad the professor provided this one to the class for free, because I can think of a number of things I'd rather buy with the money it would've cost me.

[josefin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Är så glad att jag äntligen är klar med denna bok!!! Jag förväntade mig väldigt lite och väldigt lite var exakt det jag fick. Läste denna boken på svenska och jag hatade hur den var skriven.

Vissa karaktärer var minnesvärda, som exempelvis Jay, Ruby och Stanton; andra kommer jag knappt ihåg - och jag läste ut denna bok för endast 5 minuter sedan.

[Fiona Hocking · Rating 1 out of 5]

another book of short stories masquerading as a novel. common theme of fictional town in Portugal could have been fun and interesting, but unfortunately was bored theoughout the whole thing. worst thing i've read this year.

[Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cameos yes. And nothing wrong with a series of them. Make of it what you will, but I made plenty.

[Marilena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alentejo Blue was a novel I picked out from the hotel guests' book recycling library at the Hotel Minoa, Tolon, Greece, having finished my last novel. Shoved in amongst the rows of well thumbed German titles, chick lit and spy thrillers, it called out to me because of the author’s name on the spine, Monica Ali, whose earlier novel Brick Lane I had really enjoyed. Alentejo Blue is quite a different read. Although it is still well crafted, full of beautiful observations of the complexities of human nature and emotion, it felt rather more like a collection of short stories or individual pen pictures. These different characters and their stories had the location of a remote Portuguese village in common. Initially little was explained and few clear connections were made by the author, but then the characters started to interact or refer to each other during the narrative, and a colourful picture of a little community was gradually given life.

Alentejo Blue was a realistic story in the sense that the characters each had their inner emotional conflicts which occasionally were openly expressed and so spilled over into the action. But this happened rarely. Much was left unsaid or undone, and there was no obvious conclusion to the novel other than that all the characters came together for the annual village feast day at the end. People got a bit merry, danced, argued, fought and then not much changed which I suppose is what ordinary life often amounts to. I did enjoy meeting the individual characters who had some interesting quirks and amusing or sad habits. The narrative remained in the third person throughout, but by focusing on a different a character’s viewpoint in turn the reader is given a more rounded, multi layered view of events or circumstances. Circumstances is a better word than events because very little actually happened.

The book was primarily about ordinary people living in an ordinary village community, albeit in Portugal. There was a bit of local colour with the interjection of some phrases in Portuguese, the descriptions of the landscape and references to Portuguese politics and the local trade in cork. But aside from that the story could have taken place in any small village. Maybe that was the point - that whatever country you care to examine there are always ordinary people struggling with ordinary problems. It was interesting to see how most characters had dreams or suggested they had interesting pasts but never seemed to fully act on these dreams or potentials. One person, the likeable but lonely bar owner, actually left the village and went to live and work in the USA, only to return and be sucked into the old routine again, running the same old dirty cloth over the same bar every night. Several characters passed through the village as tourists or short terms visitors and that threw a different perspective on village life and why people travelled there. The funniest or perhaps saddest family were the ex pat Brits, the Potts, who left England under a cloud and developed a bigger cloud in Portugal, sinking into the mud and mire of small town gossip and never truly belonging. I felt sorry for their two children. Most of us carry a heavy emotional load but we usually just deal with it and carry on as before was the message of the story.

Overall a fairly interesting and well written book, and a good holiday read, although Alentejo Blue will probably not be the novel that will change your view of life or one you could strongly recommended to your book group.

[Christiane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Para mi lo único gratificante de este libro fue la portada de mi edición con los preciosos azulejos portugueses. He leído “Brick Lane” y sé que Monica Ali sabe contar una buena historia pero este libro me dejó perpleja.
No es una novela, ni siquiera una colección de cuentos cortos sino son más bien unos episodios en la vida de los habitantes de Mamarrosa, portugueses y extranjeros.
No ofrece color local porque aparte de los “pais” y “mães” y alguna otra palabra portuguesa, los alcornoques y los marcos de las ventanas y puertas pintados de azul alentejo podría ser un pueblito en cualquier país mediterráneo.
Es un libro poblado de personajes infelices; la atmósfera es de tristeza, derrota, abandono, depresión, soledad, pobreza y vacío; hay un suicidio, adulterio, homosexulidad escondida, embarazo adolescente, alcoholismo, obesidad, y una familia de expatriados ingleses viviendo peor que los cerdos, etc. etc.
Todo esto no me hubiera impedido disfrutar del libro pero el estilo es tan vago, tan borroso, la autora se pierde en tantos detalles superfluos, no resuelve los asuntos relevantes, no se va a ninguna parte que después de haber leído las dos terceras partes mi paciencia no daba para más.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in the Alentejo region of Portugal, each chapter is told from a different character's perspective. Ali tells the story of 84-year-old Joao and his lifelong love for Rui; of middle-aged Stanton who had moved to the country to work on his book; of overweight Vasco who runs the local bar/cafe and worries about wasting his life; of young and wild Jay, uneducated, poor, doomed, born to drunken, dead-beat parents; of retired British Eileen* vacationing w/ her condescending husband; of teenage Teresa who dreams of leaving; of Jay's mom Chrissie* who helps her teenage daughter get an abortion; of young and engaged Sophie and Huw. In the last story, all the characters converge. It almost read as a book of short stories. There is very little that connects the characters other than the location or setting - and thus why it reads a bit like an assignment from an advanced writer's college course. Ali does a great job writing characters; she is clearly talented. This book, unfortunately, doesn't carry it through.

* = first person

[Susan Chow-Dukhan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alentejo Blue is about people living in a poor, small village in Portugal named Mamarrosa. It captures your attention right away, as Joao, an 84 year old man comes across a suicide victim, whom he met when he was 17 years old, and we are told some events that happened in the past.
A promising start for a novel, as we are now brought back to the present, and meet some other characters that are living or visiting Mamarrosa. As the novel continues and the lives of the characters intersect, we wind up with a book that is comprised of short stories concerning these people that culminate with the arrival of a previous resident, who had left to make his fortune and is expected to invest in the area. While the short stories are interesting and easy to read, this book is a disappointment if the reader was expecting a cohesive story line where things flow towards a climax/ending, rather than multiple disjointed short stories, with weak links to make the reader wondering how everything is suppose to gel together to reach a proper ending.

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had started reading this like a novel but by the third chapter I read it like a series of interconnected stories told in time in a small town in Portugal. There was something about that change that made it more understandable to me.

I feel as if I have the themes all wrong. There seems to be a lot on liminality and waiting for things to happen. I guess coming from a small town, some of the joys seem to be lost. There is a young woman character who is waiting to leave but still living as if she is a young woman of the town. The ambivalence is obvious but I'm not sure of the outcome.

What I mean is that it is hard to tell the intention of the author when using these particular stories from a small town. There are so many stories and the ones chosen are not always flattering. I am not sure if that is enough to constitute an intentional issue or whether it is just the literary choices. Something about that distinction matters but it flutters away when I try to dig deeper into it.

[Tim Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this book despite a bit of aggravation about 2/3 through. I loved the character development and the descriptions of details of scene and place even though many of the people are not that likeable. The story reflects a real Portuguese village with its assortment of locals, tourists, and ex-pats and how they interact without having much of a clue as to how they are really viewed. A few like the elderly João, are endearing. Unlike others, I like how the book begins, creates a cast of characters, and ends. My only criticism is that some of them seem to abruptly enter the stage too late and break the rhythm of the story. Still, by the end, I was again, completely enjoying the story.

[Hazel Fairy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've not read Monica Ali before. I found this book tricky to continue. It meandered along, some of the characters were interesting and the audience are given tantalising glimpses into more depth, but none of it is filled out really. She skips between characters without actually making the reader care about them. The setting isn't really described in sufficient detail to give it meaning. I read it right through thinking 'it must have some interesting twist or climax', but it didn't. I'm left feeling a bit flat and, to be honest, wishing I'd put it down earlier so I might get on with reading something more interesting or entertaining.

[Susan Katz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of those books that had such amazing reviews that I was SURE it was going to be good. And I guess that's why I kept reading, because I never really enjoyed it. The story looked at the lives of many different people in a small town in Portugal, and most of the characters were so thinly described that I had trouble knowing which one I was reading about at any given moment, and their interactions were so peripheral that I never really got the point of even trying to bring them together. I'm annoyed with myself that I read it to the end. . .I should have moved on to something I enjoyed more!

[Deborah-Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I first read the bio for this book, I was very excited, however, the book definitely did not live up to my expectations. The book in theory is about a group of people living in the remote Portuguese town of Mamarrosa. The stories told are mostly about those trying to run away from themselves and how this is impossible. However, I found the book interest at the beginning, but a bit dry towards the end. I loved the concept of the interwoven lives, but in reality, the intersections could have been a lot clearer and more interesting. I was a bit disappointed with how everything ended up.