Flesh and Bone and Water

A Novel

Luiza Sauma

This is a gripping, devastating, Gothic-tinged mashup of family saga and coming-of-age story that will transport you to 1980s Rio de Janeiro.

Our narrator is Andre, a middle-aged Brazilian doctor living in 2013 London. One day, he receives a mysterious letter from Brazil that begins, ‘Do you ever think of us?’ and ends with the words, ‘I will write to you again. I have a lot to tell you. I will make you wait, just as you made us wait. — Luana’

Andre doesn’t tell anyone about the letter, including his wife. He secretly carries it with him for weeks, reading it between patients, sometimes touching it in his pocket like a talisman.

This letter pulls him back into his memories of childhood in Brazil — his school friends (frenemies), his mother’s tragic death (which may or may not have been an accident), and his relationship with his dictatorial father (rocky).

As Andre’s history is slowly revealed, the narrative is punctuated by more letters from Luana. We gradually learn the truth about who Luana is and what she and Andre were to each other. Eventually, Andre returns to Brazil, where his past life and his current reality collapse into each other.

Author Luiza Sauma has crafted a story with a very strong sense of place, the kind of book you read alongside internet searches for photos of Copacabana Beach or Marajo Island where Andre and his brother swim in the Amazon — or the city of Belém, in the rainforest, where they spend the first Christmas without their mother, at their father’s old family home. The writing is so evocative you may feel the sun beating on your shoulders while the back of your neck grows sweaty.

But the bright light of Rio casts dark shadows. All of the characters, especially Andre and Luana, are haunted by the events of the past, dragging ghosts made of unresolved feelings into their current relationships. When the novel’s central mystery is finally revealed — through Andre’s memories and Luana’s letters — you may simultaneously be stunned and think of course.

Belém is the Portuguese word for ‘Bethlehem,’ but those long-dead explorers from the old world must have named it when it was abundant, full of hope. In 1985 it was a city of broken pavements, colonial buildings gone green and mossy, torrential rain, and burning sun. The people were shorter and darker than in Rio, with small eyes, like me and Papai. (Thiago was more like Mamãe: spindly and white.) It took seconds to sweat through a fresh set of clothes. We stayed at a cracked, pale yellow colonial house with tall, shuttered windows, near the Pará River — the southern part of the Amazon River, where it meets the Atlantic. — Luiza Sauma

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