The Good-Bye Angel

by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, Clifford E Landers (Translator)

There are no heroes in Igna cio de Loyola Branda o's world, only victims: not only of violence, but of deceit, desire, and fear. In The Good-Bye Angel, Branda o returns to his great subject: the tyranny of the community versus the individual, the city versus its inhabitants. Large enough to develop its own mythology, yet small enough to be provincial and petty, the city of Arealva (standing in for Brazil, and the world at large) is itself a character in Branda o's latest novel, toying with and finally consuming its citizens with the innocent cruelty of a cat with its prey--it's nothing personal, but it needs the meat. A cross between a film noir and a Greek tragedy, with more than its share of sex and drugs (though no rock 'n' roll), The Good-Bye Angel begins with a murder and ends in a panorama of ambition, obsession, libido, hypocrisy, and loneliness.

Genres: Fiction

295 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 2011

About the author

Ignacio de Loyola Brandao (born 1936 in Araraquara in São Paulo) began his career writing film reviews and went on to work for one of the principal newspapers in São Paulo. Initially banned in Brazil, his novel Zero went on to win the prestigious Brasilia Prize and become a controversial bestseller. Brandão is the author of more than a half-dozen works of fiction, including Zero, Teeth Under the Sun, and Angel of Death, all of which are available or forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. In his career he has won the Prêmio Jabuti, the most important literary prize in Brazil.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Previous Brandão reads Teeth Under the Sun and Anonymous Celebrity were five-star smashers, respectively an elegiac cineaste’s wet dream and a coruscating assault on the billion or so nonentities whose tendrils touch us irrespective of how much we hide from the men attempting to implant telescreens in our eyes while we sleep. This novel is obdurately “down and doily,” as a former GR friend was fond of saying and relates an exhausting and labyrinthine plot of murder and more murder among a gaggle of Brazilian lowlives out-limboing each other to be the lowest of the low(lives). Narrated in a loquacious and informal manner with impish footnotes, the tone is darkly comedic, verging on the “explainy” (or “telly” as those brats in creative writing courses are fond of saying) until the story moves into dialogue-driven sections where each lowlife becomes more or less interchangeable than the last, and the incoherent plot shenanigans become nothing other than a page-flicking ritual, despite the slightly clever framing device. Disappointing.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brazil offers a pair of portraits to the rest of the world. First there is the smiling samba carnival which is featured in every announcement concerning the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Then there is the nihilism of City of God http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/?... . The Good-Bye Angel harkens closer to the latter, but it does maintain a hope, even if such is welded to aspirations of celebrity.

This novel is one of the gossip pages, its events unfold after hours in pool halls and 24 hour pharmacies, past the junkies and the homeless, just outside a nightspot where the derelict and dreamy hope to catch a glimpse of “the people who matter.”

The novel opens with a pair of deaths. A celebrity has been found murdered on the same night a struggling public worker sets himself aflame. No one cares about the latter. Could it be the work of Good-Bye Angel, a serial killer known for religious symbolism via mutilation? Could it be a member of the elite -- all of whom are dripping in motivation? The novel unfolds as a piece of journalism, rife with footnotes and a bibliography. The prose captures the sordid edge of affairs and maintains a lean approach to the larger social questions.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars.

Like Zero, Teeth Under the Sun, and Anonymous Celebrity Brandão’s fourth novel published by Dalkey Archive never fails to dazzle even as it confounds the reader: the inhabitants of the city Arealva—“a beautiful city in which to kill people”—construct a tortuous maze of truths, half-truths, and lies in the pursuit of their desires. A departure from his categorically irregular structures, The Good-Bye Angel unfolds... http://shorts.nthword.com/2010/11/goo...