Nick's Reviews > The Maias

In "The Maias", Eca de Quieros takes on that familiar European theme, the decline of the Great Family, which is, for example, rendered with great seriousness by Thomas Mann in "Buddenbrooks" and withering scorn by Joseph Roth in "The Radetzky March." Eca de Quieros preceded both Mann and Roth, but like them he sees in that familial disintegration a microcosm of a diseased society, and his vision is even more jaundiced than Roth's. "The Maias" suffers from several of the unpleasant habits of nineteenth century fiction--implausible coincidences, long speeches, and sheer weight. One wonders whether Eca de Quieros' fine scalpel really needed 630 pages (in the translation I read) to reveal Portugal's society for its egotism and corruption. Almost, I am tempted to say. The frivolity of the amorous merry-go-round and the literati who take themselves all too seriously are rendered convincingly, and, if at length, with a pardonable amount of repetition. But the vision is too penetrating to remain only satiric--the almost Proustian melancholy of the ending, capped by one last surgical strike at what passes for a hero, gives the novel the depth it needs to linger in memory. It is worth noting that Eca de Quieros was himself the son of a jurist and an unnamed woman, yet managed a long diplomatic career. He fully understands his society, in the way that insiders do, without ever surrendering his perspective as an outsider, or his withering candor.