The High Mountains of Portugal
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3.9 • 13 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Yann Martel's new novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, is an uncommon adventure story that takes us from Africa in the 1600s, through Portugal at the turn of the 20th century, to the USA of the 1980s and reminds us that it is our ability to weave remarkable stories that makes us, and keeps us, human.
The High Mountains of Portugal consists of three stories. The first takes place in 1904 and follows a determinedly rational young man named Tomas on his quest to reach the High Mountains of Portugal. In the second story, which is set in 1938, Dr Eusebio Lozora conducts an autoposy on the body of an eighty-three year old man. In the third part, set in the 1980s, Senator Peter Cohen, grieving for his broken family, is forever transformed by a visit to an Oklahoma City chimpanzee sanctuary.
Together these stories form a wondrously elliptical treatise on mortality, a parable on faith itself, a thrilling quest tale and a meditation on what makes us - and keeps us - human. Tender, heartfelt, clear-eyed and frequently hilarious, with The High Mountains of Portugal Yann Martel will once again charm the millions of fans who fell for Pi.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Anyone who’s read Life of Pi knows that Canadian author Yann Martel has a gift for turning preposterous situations into emotionally rich and spiritual fables. In many ways, The High Mountains of Portugal contains plot twists more fantastical than spending 227 days on a meagre raft with a ferocious tiger. There’s a Book of Job–grade disastrous car trip, a mind-blowing autopsy and many strange encounters with chimpanzees. We weren’t sure what to make of it all, but by the end of the three interlocking chapters, we were mesmerised and uplifted by Martel’s propulsive, magical realist take on faith and the good life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An Iberian rhinoceros, two chimpanzees, three dead wives, and two dead toddlers all figure in this highly imaginative novel. Martel's narrative wizardry connects three novellas set seven decades apart in the eponymous region of Portugal. In the first section, titled "Homeless" and set in 1904, Tom s Lobo, a young resident of Lisbon whose wife and son have died, begins to walk backward "to face the uncertainty of the future," since everything he cherished in life has been taken away. Though he has lost his religious faith, he vows to find a "strange and marvelous" crucifix that resembles a chimpanzee in a church in the tiny village of Tuizelo. His quest goes awry in highly comic ways: an episode that finds him naked in a meadow rubbing lice powder over his body rivals the hilarious meerkat scene in Martel's Life of Pi. Characters from Tuizelo figure in the second section, "Homeward," set in 1938. A pathologist receives a visit from his dead wife and later discovers a dead chimpanzee curled in the body of a man on whom he does an autopsy. Martel handles this improbable scene with convincing magical realism. "Home," the third section, is set in 1981 Canada, where a politician mourning his dead wife impulsively buys a chimpanzee called Odo and travels to Tuizelo, where he was born. His grief is assuaged and his faith is restored by the ancient crucifix and the simple pleasures of country life. Martel is in a class by himself in acknowledging the tragic vicissitudes of life while celebrating wildly ridiculous contretemps that bring levity to the mystery of existence.
Customer Reviews
The high mountains of Portugal
A complete non-starter of a book. Tedious narration of a meandering storyline. Don't bother.