A beautiful, lyrical novel. The images of the sea are haunting, and contribute beautifully to the story. ( )

This was the first book I received as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer. I am very selective when I make requests for books and thought that this one would fall in line with the Allende and Garcia Marquez novels I read back in my college days. Unfortunately, this fell way short of the beauty and power of those other, more well known, works of magical realism.

For one thing, I found the book's rampant misogyny to be a bit tough to stomach. But I'd have been able to overlook that if the language had been transcendent and the story itself flowed more easily. It read like a series of vignettes roughly strung together and making little sense. I suppose it was intended to invoke a confused, non-linear dream narrative, but it didn't work for me. I kept losing interest and putting it down, only to return to it, reluctantly, days later. It took me a very long time to finish this slim volume.

I suspect some of the blame can be placed on an awkward, and perhaps too literal, translation. But whatever the case may be, I can't recommend it. ( )

As with other Magic Realism books, briefly describing the plot line in this work can be difficult. But in the end it goes something like this: The protagonist fornicates. Then he goes to sea and experiences dream-like encounters with the supernatural and surreal, overcoming any fear and gaining a new friend from the afterlife for his troubles. Once home, the cycle more or less begins again.

I suppose my synopsis gives it away: I did not enjoy this book. Although it had some poetic moments, the use of magic realism at times felt cheap and easy. I never quite felt, as I did while reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, as though I were actually inside someone's dreams, or watching The Yellow Submarine somewhere between being asleep and awake. It just didn't have that power.

In the end, it was without a compelling plot, and suffered from subplots that often seemed to serve little purpose. Perhaps something was lost in translation?

I can't recommend this work to any but those with an inexplicable obsession for reading works of magic realism, and even then I do so with the warning that this is not the best representative of that genre. ( )

Reading this book was a little like drifting in and out of sleep while swaying in a hammock. It is a book full of such pacing: close your eyes for just a moment and we've jumped forward or backward. We'll watch that scene for a moment and then slowly blink to find ourselves in another wee tale. For a book full of sea monsters and ghost pirates, sex and scandal, it was a surprisingly gentle and quiet read. ( )

I have never read a book by a Brazilian author before, so reading this book was exiting. It took a while to get used to the pacing on the book, but soon I was sucked into the story. It did remind me at times of magic realism books I have read by Spanish-speaking authors, but it still had its own flavor. The Table of Characters and Glossary of Terms in the back of the book were helpful, since a few of the characters had similar names, and I am unfamiliar with the types of fish found in Brazil. ( )